Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
Summary: Before saying a word, let me state that in my few dealings with famed uber-geek blogger, Robert Scoble, I've found him to be a great guy and I like him. Having said that, let's address the issue: Scoble asks his readers about enterprise software and demonstrates he doesn't understand it:Any of you have any ideas on how to make business software sexy?
Before saying a word, let me state that in my few dealings with famed uber-geek blogger, Robert Scoble, I've found him to be a great guy and I like him. Having said that, let's address the issue: Scoble asks his readers about enterprise software and demonstrates he doesn't understand it:
Any of you have any ideas on how to make business software sexy?
I wonder what the Enterprise Irregulars think about this? (They are a group of bloggers who cover business software).
As an enterprise software blogger, and a member of the Enterprise Irregulars group which he mentions, I feel qualified to comment on the issue: Scoble's question is irrelevant and meaningless.
Robert Scoble misses this point: unlike consumer software, where sex appeal is critical to attracting a commercially-viable audience, enterprise software has a different set of goals.
Enterprise software is all about helping organizations conduct their basic business in a better, more cost-effective manner. In software jargon, it's intended to "enable core business processes" with a high degree of reliability, security, scalability, and so on. These aren't sexy, cool attributes, but are absolutely essential to the smooth running of businesses, organizations, and governments around the world.
Recently, I asked someone from SAP, "What percentage of the world's economy runs through your systems every day?" While he didn't offer specific figures, we both agreed the number must be significant. That fact alone makes enterprise products fundamentally different from consumer software, where ease of use and simplicity are paramount.
Scoble is right to bemoan the fact that decisions to purchase enterprise software, which may affect everyone throughout an organization, are often hidden from view. Like other basic infrastructure purchases, enterprise software buying hinges on complex, highly-involved, technical and business issues requiring specialized expertise to evaluate. Similarly, when a large company installs a new air circulation system, for example, the buying decision is made by a relatively small group, even though the purchase will affect everyone in the building for years to come.
Having said this, I don't want to de-emphasize the importance of humanizing enterprise products. In fact, many enterprise vendors are looking at social media and alternative user interfaces in a bid to make their software more appealing to users and more competitive to buyers. In the last month alone, I've seen user interface demonstrations from both Oracle and SAP addressing exactly this issue.
Here's how I personally relate to software. When I'm at home using Twitter (click to follow me) , a great example of cool consumer software, I want to be delighted, thrilled, entertained, and engaged. When I transfer money through my bank, which is certainly a non-sexy enterprise system, I demand the system work every time without fail. There's a big difference between enterprise and consumer systems, a lesson I suspect Robert Scoble is about to learn.
Update: to see the latest installment, see Nick Carr’s enterprise software fantasy land.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
The question is does enterprise software understand sexy consumer products?
I agree that the consumer and enterprise spaces have different focuses. I am not so sure they are mutually independent.
RE: Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
The company scrapped the SAP install, and a wonderful young man actually cobbled together an amalgam of Web-Ware and existing Microsoft and linux products that now work seamlessly for this small business.
Unorthodox? Surely. Supportable? We'll see. A harbinger of thing to come? Certainly.
Tell me more
Intuit doesn't grasp the meaning...
It's a bad idea to blog about enterprise software
http://erikengbrecht.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-isnt-
enterprise-software-sexy.html
RE: Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
What are you smoking? Google this phrase - "botched SAP implementations".
Enterprise software is more like trying to get a business to live inside a (proprietary) box.
Don't drink the Kook-Aid.
RE: Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
RE: Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
I'm not sure I understand your gripe about Scoble
calling for sexy enterprise software.
I look at Citibank, my business and personal bank.
Citibank's Web site is enterprise software. It has not
changed in the past 3 years. The same crappy user
interface is still there. The same poor user flow is
built-in. The same poor integration between my
personal and business accounts exists. I'm grateful
that my money transfers on time.
I am now actively looking for a new bank. "Sexy" is a
competitive differentiator and good design will make
me choose a new banks.
This is more in play than your article admits.
-Frank Cohen
http://www.pushtotest.com
What isn???t sexy enterprise software?
who are exposed daily to high
interface and interaction values
inherent in TV, movies, advertising,
magazines and gadgets in the
consumer sphere are somehow
supposed to be rendered incapable of
expecting and appreciating the same
within the walls of the enterprise from
9 to 5, with a dozen enterprise
examples that aren't sexy:
What isn???t sexy enterprise software?
http://counternotions.com/2007/12/
10/sexy-enterprise/
Consumerisation of business technology
I think Scoble has a point. The distinction between "consumer" and "business" to me comes down to the fact that with consumer technologies, the buyer and the user are one and the same. With business technologies, the buyer of the software is not the user - and so considerations about how the user needs to use the software in real life take a lower priority. And mistakenly so.
And I do look forwards to a future in which business software begins to take more cues from consumer software, while still being reliable etc, e.g:
http://alanbuxton.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/the-consumerisation-of-enterprise-e-sourcing-software/
http://alanbuxton.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/the-future-of-esourcing-less-is-more/
What 'sexy' really means
In my mind, enterprise software has failed completely in this respect. It continues to treat its users, especially those on the plant floor, as industrial-age 'hands' - without valuable insight into the business processes of which they are the true masters. We, and they, are knowledge-workers. I predict that within the decade enterprise software as we know it will be fast on its way out. Within 25 years it will be relegated to the world today's mainframes live in. As the shift from the industrial age to the knowledge age intensifies, so will enterprise software's market share continue to shrink.
Positive?
The more efficient the process to a wide market (Small, Medium and Large Enterprise) won't 'shrink' while the business operations are without difficulty and 99% of the time 'will NOT fail'.
Clash of massive egos
But after we got it to where it could get the business done, the users started asking for changes that one could call embellishments. They wanted to customize the interface, they wanted AJAX, themes...they wanted it to look cool...that's an exact quote.
My experience actually building systems...opposed to actually blogging about software demos put on by reps...is that it's a huge mistake to ignore the cool factor for the system end users. Reliability and security are fundamental. User acceptance is one of the big factors about whether a system will get used at all.
It's not the cool factor
User acceptance isn't "one of" the big factors - it IS the only relevant factor. Without user acceptance and support, no project can succeed long enough to make it worthwhile. And I think that's what you were getting at.
Regarding the subjective nature of cool...
Cool is subject to interpretation. Focused business users prefer tools that make their jobs easier and more productive. To many of them, an attractive UI is simply one that removes as much friction as possible from their day-to-day activities. That, is a cool UI.
OK, so "sexy" was the wrong word
There are a whole bunch of ways in which Enterprise Software is typically different from "home user" stuff (even if an increasing number of those home user apps happen.
1: Enterprise Apps can rely on a particular client (systems) configuration. Customer-facing apps have to work with "anything" (Internet Explorer vs. Firefox, Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, Broadband vs. dial-up)
2: Enterprise Apps can assume that staff will take the time to be properly trained in how to use the Apps. Hence, you can get away with what the Customer-facing crowd would regard as "confusing" forms, and rely on a learning curve to deliver a "dense" application rather than an "obvious, click here, click there, click wherever.)
3: Enterprise Apps can, indeed DO, enforce a relatively standard workflow. Customer-facing apps tend to be "simple in the extreme". For stuff like cost-control of a multiple-project office, I can see why you'd want standard workflows as the propogation of best practice.
4: Enterprise Apps _TEND_ to be integrated and form the "whole solution" (or at worst, integrate with one or two other enterprise Apps - SAP talking to PeopleSoft or similar) (this is obviously related to the standard-process stuff in 3). Customer-facing Apps tend to (certainly in the last year or so) expect to be part of an ad-hoc "mashup", in which their usage will ebb and flow.
As a result of the above, Enterprise Apps tend to be good for "top-down command and control". Customer-facing apps tend to be good for "ad hoc, evolving process, fast-changing team"-time work.
Why would you want to make one look more like the other (except maybe, that Enterprise Apps could learn something about usability, but as you say, they are!)
Horses for courses, as we say in England.
RE: Robert Scoble doesn't understand enterprise software
Why is "enterprise software" evil?
I remember when I was finding bugs in rocket and
aircraft simulations for NASA, when I was finding bugs
and helping make CAD/CAM/CAE software better so
we could have better cars and trucks and cranes and
toys and power tools. I developed a data-base
generator for some old engineers to help them keep
better track of their existing assembly, part and tool
designs. Then a consultant showed up touting MRP
and massive integration of data-bases. It sounded so
easy, so convenient. But then I got this queasy
feeling...
When I went back to university to re-tool, I found they
were flagrantly violating the federal Privacy Act (and
lying about it), not because of any need, but because
of a desire for power and convenience. They tied
themselves in loops to rationalize even the most
blatant violations.
I want to know why so much so-called "enterprise
software" is downright evil. Why are they so intent on
violating customers' privacy? Why are they so intent
on violating employees' privacy? Why are they so
intent on violating students' privacy?
Answers
More often than not, multinational companies take such essential, and in-place, s/w for granted. Maintenance and upgrade take a backseat, while s/w development keep working hard on flexible solutions within the companies. By the time (perhaps 3 years has passed..) the modern technology of the solution has changed, and 3 years hard work is not compatible and I bet they are first to have the finger pointed at them!
I am quite sure that if you had a team of Material Resource Planning consultants and freelance developers (with good backgrounds) on-site and a team of your people to learn and train the new MRP procedures, your queasy feeling could have been avoided.
The only real difference...
Consumer software tends to have a better designed interface, with easier to decipher menu systems and task oriented wizards, making for a quick and easy learning curve.
Enterprise software tends to be the exact opposite. The geeks that write the code have their own logic when it comes to menus and file systems, logic that rarely coincides with that of anyone else in existence, and particularly not the end users of the products.
A well designed and thoroughly thought out user interface design belongs in both products. The average business user does not have time or funds available for days, or even weeks, of training on how to use new software.
Consumer software is every bit as powerful as enterprise software, and in some cases, more so. There's absolutely no reason enterprise geeks can't write code with the end user in mind, as well as the process. It takes little more than a few small focus groups and the ability of the geeks to actually hear what the groups say.
forget Scoble, does Krigsman know what a "cool consumer app" is?
Does Michael Krigsman know the difference between consumer software (a .exe file that runs on your system) and a web site url? This is the trouble when journalism majors start writing about technology. All of a sudden the loosest "user speak" becomes the norm for the I.T. industry. How soon can it be before "coffee holder" and "DVD-ROM drive" become synonomous now?