While the age of data is putting digital systems into more and more prominence with each passing day, the physical realities for many companies are still the bottom line, including making sure that their products are shipped out to their customers with reliable practices.

At Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks Connect 2016 event, Nick Hoffman, owner and founder of Share a Refund LLC, joined John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about his company, the importance of easy customer interfaces and his plans for the future.

Systems of shipping

Asked about how Share a Refund, which automatically audits and files claims (for overcharge refunds) for shipments by its customers, finds the cost errors made by the companies doing the shipping, Hoffman made sure to note that those errors are relatively infrequent.

“I have tons of respect for FedEx and UPS. When you think about the logistics networks that they’ve built, it is absolutely impressive,” he said. “The truth is [that] these delivery guarantees, even one minute late, it happens. And on average, 4.5 percent of all the shipments that we look at, we get refunds on.”

He also noted the usefulness of the tracking data generated by the scanning that takes place along each step of a shipment’s journey through the routes of these companies. “Tracking events are in our system and available throughout all the interfaces that we’ve built into Share a Refund.”

Intuit connection

A big point of excitement for Hoffman was that Share a Refund had won the Apps Showdown at the event, netting themselves a $100,000 prize. In response, Hoffman stated, “Really, it’s just validation. It was several years of hard work in the making to build Share a Refund, so outside of market success, which we’re seeing, to really be recognized by such a great tech company is just a tremendous honor.”

Hoffman shared that he hadn’t initially thought of Intuit as a partner, but when looking to scale the business up, he said, “I looked for support, and in doing so, recognized QuickBooks and all the customers that they have on QuickBooks as potential candidates to benefit from shipment auditing as a performance-based service.”

And as far as other companies that can further empower Share a Refund, Hoffman indicated that AWS is top of the stack. “As far as AWS, I am drinking the Kool-Aid. I’m a systems architecture guy, I went to all the developer coaching seminars, etc., for Amazon,” he said. “And that’s part of the genius behind Share a Refund, in how we provide a lot of our real-time services, is through the services of AWS. So, in general, Amazon’s a great partner to Share a Refund, not so much as a channel for bringing us new customers, but more from an infrastructure perspective.”

Other plans

Hoffman also described AbsoLumen, a product he’d co-invented. “What we’re trying to do is build a street-light about the size of a Pringles can and sell that to municipalities at a good rate,” he explained.

Features of AbsoLumen include the quality of consuming energy at two-fifths the rate of a standard streetlight, along with connectivity in the forms of radio link, GPS and Wi-Fi, “All of which is going into AWS IoT, and we’ll give field workers an app on their phone that they can go and administrate the infrastructure from.”

As the interview came to a close, Hoffman shared some advice. “I would say to any developer that wants to build an app right now, QuickBooks is the best place to look to make your app a success, based off of the potential in the market and also the support you’re going to get from that team.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect.

*Disclosure: Intuit and other companies sponsor some QuickBooks Connect segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Intuit nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE