• Senior executives understand that innovation cannot be generated solely by passively waiting for customer suggestions and questions. To that end, Intuit Canada actively seeks information in a number of industry-leading ways. These include town hall meetings where employees gather information publicly from consumers, as well as “Follow Me Homes,” possibly one of the company’s greatest innovations: the same engineers and product managers who develop the product go out and watch the customers using the software in their own environment. Most successful software firms are good at the technology aspect while tending to neglect the human element. That’s the strength of the “Follow Me Home” program. It forces technologists out of their comfort zone and into real world applications, giving them a more comprehensive knowledge of their own products and how they are used. This, in turn, allows Intuit to respond directly to marketplace needs.

 

• Intuit Canada, through its QuickTax EasyStep Interview, has actually made it pretty painless (we won’t go so far as to say enjoyable) to file our income tax. Because it allows individuals to automate the customisation process of filling out and submitting their returns, QuickTax and its seamless integration with Revenue Canada’s NETFILE has greatly eased the annual burden of wading through dense forms and making complex calculations only to end up owing the government large sums of money. Any company that has that kind of impact on our lives deserves all the accolades it receives.

Obviously, Intuit Canada is a worthy ASTech Award Recipient. Put simply, in Intuit Canada, Alberta has a home-grown world high-tech leader (they’ve recently penetrated the UK market). We can boast of being home to a company known as much for its humanitarian, fair-minded support of employees and community as it is for its commitment to excellence, the technological brilliance of its products, and the satisfaction of its customers. Our province has a well-deserved global reputation for performance in matters related to extracting oil in a challenging environment. Companies like Intuit Canada are allowing us to build recognition in other sectors as well, adding to Alberta’s status as an economic powerhouse whose success is due more to a pioneering spirit and love of science, technology, and innovation than the coincidence of sitting atop vast reserves of black gold.