Intuit Accelerates Development with Generative AI Platform to Enable Expert-Free Business Management

Which Company's Case Study?

The company featured in this case study is Intuit, a major U.S. financial software company that provides accounting software "QuickBooks," tax preparation software "TurboTax," and email marketing service "Mailchimp," among others. The company serves approximately 100 million small businesses, self-employed individuals, and consumers worldwide, aiming to simplify complex financial tasks.

Challenges Intuit Aimed to Solve

Many small business owners and self-employed individuals who are Intuit's customers do not possess sufficient expertise in areas such as accounting, tax, and marketing. While occupied with daily operations, they faced challenges like cash flow forecasting, invoice reminders, and creating effective marketing emails. Meanwhile, Intuit's developers also needed a common platform to quickly deliver a consistent, safe, and responsible generative AI experience across multiple products.

How AI Was Used

To address these challenges, Intuit developed its proprietary generative AI operating system, "GenOS (Generative AI Operating System)." This is a common platform designed to accelerate AI development across all Intuit products. GenOS can selectively utilize multiple general-purpose Large Language Models (LLMs) along with its unique "financial LLM" custom-trained with financial data. This has successfully improved accuracy in accounting workflows while reducing response time by 50% compared to general LLMs. The AI assistant "Intuit Assist," integrated into each product, operates on GenOS, providing personalized suggestions and automating tasks tailored to the user's situation.

Impact of Implementation and Key Takeaways

• ▸**Increased Development Speed:** The common GenOS platform has enabled thousands of developers to rapidly experiment with and implement AI-related features.
• ▸**Enhanced Accuracy through Domain Specialization:** By developing and utilizing not only general-purpose LLMs but also proprietary financial LLMs specialized in financial data, Intuit achieved high accuracy and performance in specialized tasks.
• ▸**Improved Product Experience:** In QuickBooks, invoice creation and payment reminders are automated, and in Mailchimp, AI generates marketing email copy and designs, helping users behave like experts.
• ▸**AI and Expert Collaboration:** For complex problems that AI cannot fully handle, an "expert-in-the-loop" mechanism is also provided to seamlessly connect users with human experts (such as tax accountants and certified public accountants), offering users peace of mind.

What Japanese Companies Can Learn

Intuit's case study demonstrates the importance of not just using external AI services, but also building a proprietary AI platform by leveraging a company's strengths: "data" and "expertise (domain knowledge)." While not every company needs to develop from an OS level, aspects such as "creating an AI model and prompt library specialized for one's own business" and "adopting a platform-oriented mindset to selectively use multiple AI models as appropriate" can be referenced by many companies. The strategy of integrating AI into the core of products and services to deliver new value to customers, rather than just using it as an efficiency tool, is an applicable concept across all industries.

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