While the focus of the QuickBooks Connect expo is to provide personal engagement for the many entrepreneurs who attend and engage in the opportunities it offers, Intuit, Inc.’s QuickBooks applications offer connectivity online for those same business owners.

Leslie Barber, small business engagement officer for Intuit QuickBooks, spoke with Jeff Frick, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during QuickBooks Connect 2015 about how these applications are becoming more close-knit, the development of Intuit’s Own It network and lessons learned from small businesses.

Diversity in business

With eight years of experience running a business she founded prior to joining Intuit, Barber is no stranger to the concerns and needs of business owners. One piece of advice she shared from this experience was how important and helpful it could be to “find those people who love to do what you hate to do.”

Speaking about her position now at Intuit, Barber sees the conference as a way for business owners to come get “really practical, pragmatic tips … they get to be inspired as well as be educated, [and] connect with other small business owners,” she said.

App usefulness

Discussing some of the ways in which QuickBooks apps are helping small business owners, Barber touched on the way that cloud tools are helping to eliminate double-entry of data, along with other inconveniences. While Intuit is still finding ways to have QuickBooks’ apps talk to each other and share data to help business owners, there’s already a clear showing of these tools allowing business owners to spend more time growing the business and less time running the business.

A highlight of the interview was discussion about Intuit’s Own It network, an online service “where small businesses can connect with each other, ask questions, answer questions and really help move their business forward.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE