It's time to get back to our series on helping you Get Ready for Top 100, so I'm giving you a glimpse of our new Ecosystem component of the awards—or those questions we ask to measure your app and software experiences.
These questions are very important to those ProAdvisors who consider themselves candidates for the "App-ologist" and "Desktop-integrations" awards.
For the 2023 process, we have somewhat combined our "old way" of measuring ecosystem involvement with the way we've done it the past few years.
In Part 1, every qualified nominee completing our totally new Formal Application will provide information about how they interact with the 75 highest rated apps in the QuickBooks App Ecosystem (based on the most common areas of ProAdvisor practice measured from past years of Top 100 submissions).
We still are reviewing these 75 apps, and if we find that an insufficient number of our selected 75 apply to our international candidates, we will offer an alternative "App list" more akin to the apps found on the various QuickBooks App Stores for the Intuit countries offering those listings.
But for now, we wanted to go ahead and address this important area of our Top 100 process with the apps as they presently stand, even though we will not discuss all the apps within this article (you will only get a glimpse of a few of them).
For each of the 75 Apps in Part 1, you will tell us—using a matrix (like the one shown below) if you Use the App—if you have a Referral arrangement with the App, if you are a Reseller for the App, if you are Certified in the App, or if you are a Developer Authorized Implementer of the App.
You also have the option of selecting not applicable if none of the options apply for a specific App. Please note, the term "App" as used here also applies to third-party software that may be listed in the QuickBooks Desktop App Center.
Past this point of completing the Part 1 matrix, your participation in the rest of the Ecosystem questions about apps and software contained in Part 2 is optional. You can choose to continue or not (an example of the prompt question for that choice is shown below).
If applicants choose to continue, they will find the "power of artificial intelligence" has enabled us to take their answers from Part 1 and populate the apps they chose for each measure we have routinely scored.
For example, if you select eight of the 75 Apps as licensed apps you use for yourself or with your clients, those eight apps will be listed in Part 2-Section 1 where we ask you to tell us how you use that App (as shown below).
Maybe you select only two of the 75 apps as those with which you have a formal Referral Arrangement. In that case, only those two apps will be listed automatically in Part 2-Section 2 when we ask you to tell us about your referral experiences over 2022 (as can be seen below).
As in past years, we will honor the unique relationship between you and your software/app developers if you are a "reseller," so we will not ask you to disclose specific sales related information. As such, there is no follow-up question associated with the reseller column reported in Part 1 for the Top 75 Apps.
If you tell us you are Certified in three of the 75 apps, those three apps will be the apps listed in Part 2-Section 4 where we ask if you were certified before 2022, or how many hours it took you to get certified during 2022 (a portion of the question is shown below).
And if you tell us you were an "Authorized Implementer" for four Software packages (or apps) out of the 75, then just those four will be the listed in Part 2-Section 5 when we ask you about the total amount time you spent during 2022 implementing those software packages or apps.
In each Section of Part 2, you will have the opportunity to list one (1) additional app or Software for the detailed question if you have a software or app that better reflects your use, referrals, certification commitment, or implementation time requirements during 2022.
This "write-in" option may be more important to our international participants than our 'domestic' ProAdvisors since, even though a majority of the 75 apps are available in non-US markets (as well as the US), we know there are additional apps that are perhaps more commonly used in other areas across the globe.
As I mentioned earlier, if our research prior to the launch of the formal application determines this method is insufficient for our international participants, we will offer an alternative instead.
For the vast majority of ProAdvisors we believe the 75 Apps listed this year, based on their rankings from Intuit within the categories of app/software most used by our ProAdvisors over the past several years, provide the apps/software that most of our ProAdvisors use on a day-to-day basis.
We also believe the new system gives everyone a convenient way to participant in one ranking mechanism, and at the same time allow those who wish to stress their app and software expertise with the additional mechanisms by which to do so without inconveniencing every ProAdvisor since those additional mechanisms are optional.
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