Intuit (owners of QuickBooks) and Salesforce.com have announced a strategic alliance that will make it easier for millions of small businesses to manage customer information alongside their financial data. This collaboration will merge leading CRM and financial management to allow small businesses using QuickBooks to more efficiently manage customer relationships so they can save time and close more deals.

A recent survey by Intuit found that more than one-half of small businesses perform CRM tasks manually or with software not designed for the job; 28 percent use pen and paper, while another 28 percent manually enter data on spreadsheets. These results signal an acute need in the market for integrated solutions.

"This alliance will create offerings that allow small businesses to better manage their customers and deals," said Dan Wernikoff, vice president and general manager of Intuit's Financial Management Solutions division. "With thousands of small businesses using QuickBooks and Salesforce, this is a great way for two industry leaders to leverage the next era of cloud computing to help small businesses grow."

"By working with Intuit, we are bringing the industry's leading customer relationship management solution to QuickBooks customers," said George Hu, executive vice president, platform and marketing, salesforce.com. "This alliance will accelerate the adoption of social, mobile and open cloud CRM solutions by small businesses."

As a part of the strategic alliance, Intuit will resell Salesforce CRM with QuickBooks integration that synchronizes customer data with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online. This application will provide streamlined information to those in sales and management to eliminate data entry in two different systems, showing aggregated customer information alongside probability for closing a deal.

Once available, it will be a prominent application on Intuit App Center, where small businesses can easily find, buy and use connected Web-based applications that run on the Intuit Partner Platform. The application is expected this summer with pricing to be announced at launch.