Possibilities Talk Series: A Conversation on Powering Success for Small Businesses with Rania Succar at Intuit QuickBooks

Small and medium size businesses, often collectively referred to as SMBs, are responsible for a significant percentage of job growth in the economy. And, what some might find surprising they represent a sizeable percentage of GDP, especially in the services sector. This group of businesses are one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, not necessarily having the resources to cover for a sudden drop in revenue, increased regulation, supply chain challenges, staffing shortages, and navigating the administrative challenges in tapping government assistance programs like PPP.

Intuit has been working to power prosperity for its customers for decades with a suite of familiar offerings including QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mint and most recently Credit Karma and Mailchimp. With a broad customer base and long history with the SMB segment, QuickBooks in particular has continued has established itself as the platform that helps SMBs manage their business end-to-end, using the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and richer data sets to offer services that weren’t conceivable in the past. The result is proving to be hugely beneficial for overstretched entrepreneurs and their teams, especially around forecasting, accounts payable, and access to capital, as cash flow which are the lifeblood of small and medium size businesses.

Rania Succar, Senior Vice President, QuickBooks Money Platform at Intuit, leads the team delivering money offerings that power small business success and joined me for a discussion on SMBs and the impacts of the pandemic, the rapidly evolving world of money and payments, and the opportunities created with technologies including artificial intelligence to help the financial outcomes of small and medium size businesses. We also spent time speaking about her personal journey as an Arab-American woman in business and the nonprofit she launched ten years ago, Jusoor, that provides education opportunities for displaced Syrian children and youth who have been impacted by war.

?Right out of the gate, Rania shared her priorities and mission in one powerful statement: “Everything we do at Intuit is about powering prosperity around the world.”

And while this commitment has been steady since the time Scott Cook founded Intuit in the early 1980s, the pandemic arrived with a new set of challenges and possibilities. SMBs struggled with evaporating demand, unprecedented supply chain disruptions, staffing shortages, and rapidly evolving Covid related regulatory impacts from health and safety. This was all compounded by the difficulty for SMBs to manage the complexity of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) application process that could help stem the cash crunch. QuickBooks was in a unique position to help.??

?As we’ve seen and heard time and time again, the pandemic was an accelerant for digitization trends already in place, and in many ways, this very digitization is creating more opportunities for small business than they’ve ever had before.

Rania is passionate about embracing the opportunity to help Intuit’s SMB customers be resilient and weather the storm. Equally importantly, her team has been able to help them accelerate on new opportunities, reduce transactional friction, and access ‘smart’ capital on-demand supported by a powerful, smart technology platform. Of course, it always comes back to cash flow, a delicate dance that every SMB navigates. Rania and her team focus their work with the “customer is at the center of the experience” and this mindset is baked into QuickBooks’ design philosophy and core to how Intuit has served its customers for decades.

QuickBooks has built trust with their customers in their willingness to listen and frame the solution around the user’s problem. QuickBooks strives to be the source of truth when it comes to not only the financial health for a SMB but the status today of things like cash flow. They do this by integrating with other third-party systems that are a necessity in the SMB world.

Where things start to get really exciting is where QuickBooks is applying the power of data and AI on specific applications to better equip the SMB owner in their daily decision making, highlight opportunities and potential challenges before they arrive, with suggested actions to change the current course outcome. By doing this, QuickBooks has put the power of financial decision-making right in the hands of the small business owners.

In Rania’s own words, “We help power small businesses, enable small business owners to sleep better at night, to hire more people, take on more jobs, which in turns trickles down across the economy, and that is very, very meaningful to me.”

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Rania’s Personal Journey & Jusoor

We switched gears to learn more about Rania’s remarkable journey. What struck me right away was her very intentional series of steps that allowed her to gain unique skills and experiences and at the same time be laser focused on a concrete goal that would make an impact.

Of course, this wisdom doesn’t come without a few scars along the way, and Rania shared an important piece of advice for young people just starting their careers.

With a career that spanned the very top names in education (Harvard), investment banking (Merrill Lynch), consulting (McKinsey), and technology (Google), she challenged herself, searched for meaning, and was intentional on making the move to Intuit QuickBooks. It fulfilled her professional and personal objectives, and personal desire to be purpose-led.?And helping people, in the form of creating opportunities for small businesses to succeed, adds a layer of meaning to her work far beyond financial compensation or professional prestige.

Rania, as an Arab-American, Muslim-American, woman in technology has faced her share of racism, and kind of ‘self-regulated’ an important part of her identity early in her career for fear of negative association.?

With her Syrian heritage and visiting her extended family in Damascus over the years, she was painfully aware of the difference in the opportunity afforded to her in the US, as compared to her cousins in Syria. Ten years ago, she founded Jusoor, to help “Syrian youth realize their potential through programs in the fields of education, career development and global community engagement.”?

Today, Rania, through Jusoor shares her story of hope along with the rewards and impact of grass roots level action.

?“It's been an incredible journey of hope in an environment that has been so devastatingly depressing. It has taught me that no matter how depressing the causes we care more about, no matter the institutional forces against us ... I believe that human engagement at the grass roots level can make such a difference.” – Rania Succar

We are so fortunate Rania was able to join us and share her perspectives and the ways in which others can harness their own energy and passion to change the world for the better.

?Here is the link for my conversation with Rania, you can also watch it below.