Millions of global small business clients. The processing of one out of every 12 paychecks globally. Some of the most recognizable financial products on the market — TurboTax, Quickbooks and Mint among them. Over its 35 years in business, Intuit has grown to 9,000 employees in eight countries around the world — and gained the distinction of being in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 17 years in a row.

It might not seem like a startup, but Intuit is fiercely devoted to acting like one in its commitment to innovation. As FinTech disruptors expand their offerings to include tax filing services — encroaching upon the territory Intuit has long been known for — the company has to stay nimble to compete. An evolving portfolio of products (Intuit recently added new solutions to connect TurboTax users to tax experts) and a commitment to creating a cutting-edge digital workplace are two ways the company refuses to rest comfortably on its laurels. 

Atticus Tysen, SVP and CIO of Intuit, is taking charge of building that digital workplace to support existing employees, help attract new ones and empower the work behind the innovative products Intuit creates. Every day, he makes sure that Intuit's IT organization is balancing the needs of its users to be creative with the mandate to be compliant and secure. 

"The thing I love about working for Intuit is we power prosperity around the world, and as CIO, I get to empower 9,000 employees around the globe to do that every day."

Atticus Tysen, SVP and CIO, Intuit

Working toward a "One Intuit" strategy throughout the ecosystem

Since 2012, the company has worked toward a "One Intuit" strategy that includes a unified ecosystem of people, processes and technology. To constantly evolve and shift in the mode of a startup, Intuit must team up with best-of-breed technology partners that have open platforms and mature APIs. 

With diversified products, Intuit has been successful by focusing on the needs of three different customer types — consumers, the self-employed and small businesses. This diverse customer base provides an opportunity but also a challenge in making services for these different constituents come together in a complex ecosystem.

The partnership between Intuit and Box came early on in the company's quest to centralize its content in the cloud and gain more visibility into how information is used across the enterprise. Box helps power "One Intuit" by erasing the boundaries between content types and buckets. As a unified content layer, Box acts as a collaborative document-management system, giving Intuit visibility into how information is being used across the enterprise so it can best utilize data while protecting customer information. Tysen says, "Solutions like Box help us to erase the boundaries. We can share anything with anybody in an appropriate way."

"Box gives us visibility into how information is being used across the enterprise so we can fulfill on our promise of protecting our customers."

 Atticus Tysen, SVP and CIO, Intuit

 Less time spent getting up to speed, more time spent collaborating

Parts of Intuit's business are highly seasonal, and there are various peaks throughout the year in its consumer tax group and small business and self-employed groups. Intuit onboards thousands of seasonal employees to help customers across the US and Canada during these peaks, and when the season is over, those temporary employees are offboarded again. So having tools that new employees can jump right in on is critical to Intuit's processes, which is why an essential part of the Intuit-Box partnership is Box's integrations with G Suite, Office 365 and Slack. 

In the past, working together on an internal piece of content such as a slide deck required stakeholders to email around multiple versions for input, which resulted in "serial input" as opposed to real-time collaboration. Collaborating on a deck in Box, on the other hand, allows for simultaneous collaboration, so ideas can be developed in parallel and build on each other. Tysen says, "It's a whole different energy than doing it serially."

With content housed on Box, yet easily accessible in G Suite and Office 365, employees can choose to work in the ways they're most productive and comfortable, without jeopardizing sensitive data or company IP. Regardless of the tools users choose, all content lives in one place, so it's easy to find, manage and govern. "Box for G Suite has allowed us to get right to work on customer problems instead of worrying about which tools to use," says Tysen. 

Partnering with an open platform like Box that integrates well with the tools Intuit employees were already using — and those they might adopt in the future — means that as the nature of work evolves, the digital workplace can evolve along with it to meet the needs of employees.

"One of our philosophies is to provide best-of-breed tools for our workforce, but we also have to make sure they're leading-edge technology and from suppliers that are pushing our thinking."

Atticus Tysen, SVP and CIO, Intuit

Keeping the workforce securely in the flow of innovation

Given the nature of its business, Intuit has to be laser-focused on security. And security features have to integrate well with the way people work. Enterprise class security is no longer the opposite of a good employee experience.

Tysen's charge is to find tools that are personalized for the company’s needs. "Our customers entrust us with their financial, and very personal, information," he says, "so it's important as we innovate that we handle this information with the highest security — but still allow all of our employees to be creative and use tools that they want to get their job done."

The digital workplace is only useful and exciting to the degree that it includes tight security and the ability to govern content closely. One of the reasons Intuit chose Box was because of how much thought Box puts into security. With Box KeySafe, Intuit has complete and independent control of encryption keys to content in Box, and Box Governance provides enhanced protection for sensitive content. The ability to share content securely via links, rather than attaching files to emails, keeps employees in a collaborative state while still making it easy to secure the flow of information.

"Our philosophy is that all of the customer's information is their information, so our bar is very high on how that's handled."

Atticus Tysen, SVP and CIO, Intuit

Enabling the pace of change into the future

Once, the company lived on DOS. Then, it moved to the cloud. In the three and a half decades since its founding, Intuit has already reinvented itself multiple times. The momentum behind disruption comes from what those within the company refer to as "a constructive dissatisfaction with the status quo."

As the landscape changes, Intuit adapts with innovative new products and by appealing to diverse customer bases. The company is devoted to constantly assessing and reassessing the needs of its customers and the market, using data to address those needs for more personalized products and iterating on success — all from a place of secure content governance. Heeding the call for "One Intuit" starts with content managed securely in the cloud and usable in familiar ways.