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Why Enterprise Software Sucks

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Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#171

Post by corebit »

Spooky23 wrote: post #132
freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

Exactly. They also control the workflow. If you don't like the 15 steps it takes to update your expense report, good for you, you won't get paid. Companies will lose deals unless they do what customers want. Eventually, that chunks up the software and makes it awful. That's just the nature of the beast, and it's no different than things were pre-computer. I had a .gov customer that had a very specific ruleset about s…

This story needs a write up! I'm fascinated!

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#173

Post by afarrell »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #85
ch4s3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love excel and Photoshop. I’ve never met any heavy excel user that prefers any other spreadsheet software or even has anything negative to say about it.

Half of the people I know who love Excel in that way would now be making significantly more money if they didn't. These people fall into two groups: The spreadsheet jockey who just likes doing cool things with the data. Excel is just powerful enough to satiate this guy long enough for him to fall out of the habit of rethinking his workflow. If he had moved on earlier he'd be a DBA or a data scientist by now. The othe…

> would now be making significantly more money if they didn't

Er, I think reality is closer to "they would be making significantly more money if they loved python more than Excel".

A wheelchair is a large clunky device that can't go up stairs or rocky hills. Legs are far more versatile. But it is incorrect to say that someone can go many more places if they didn't have the wheelchair.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#174

Post by dyeje »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

I think it's spot on. Anybody who has participated in an enterprise sales cycle knows it's a ridiculous game of checking boxes created by random stakeholders who all need to have a say because they're Important with a capital I. At a certain point even a dev team with the best intentions can't create a usable piece of software with the resulting incoherent set of requirements.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#175

Post by Goladus »

ridaj wrote: post #152
freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

Exactly right, even to the point of bringing up a few specific industries that do in fact have specialized needs.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#176

Post by lmkg »

jasode wrote: post #72
freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

>Word, Excel, SAP, Photoshop, Salesforce, JIRA. I'd refine your examples somewhat. The author's idea of "enterprise software" would be more like SAP/Salesforce/JIRA. A client-server model type of software (data lives in big central corporate databases) instead of being documents-oriented (user data lives in files like .xlsx, .docx, .psd). In contrast, the other desktop software of Photoshop/Word/Excel is often bought…

But there are enterprise versions of Word, Excel, and a few others. And it's worth taking a look at what those versions add. By and large, being able to centrally manage and update from the IT department, and even being able to deploy additional content (plug-ins, templates, etc).

So, they're not client-server, but they do add a server into the mix.

The other common set of features is related to distribution and access. Encryption, workflow management, integration into server-hosted software, etc.

At a certain point, I think that enterprise software development starts to look like enterprise IT consulting. The line between then is pretty blurry, and I think that the really successful enterprise software shops are the ones that don't have an allergic reaction to doing consultant-y things as part of the product/services they offer.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#177

Post by airstrike »

collyw wrote: post #122
airstrike wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the workplace, people like using MS Excel because the alternatives are ridiculously inferior

I would say that its because people understand how to use it. Excel is frequently used as a database, not because it makes a good database but because people don't understand how to use Access (or any other relational database) but Excel is easy enough that they can get something usable.

That's part of it, but not all and also not the most important IMHO

Excel clones simply don't cover the breadth of functionality provided by the OG, not to mention key UX features like countless hotkeys and menu accelerators

Every Excel user understands Google Sheets. They just don't like feeling like they're strapped to a wheelchair

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#178

Post by marcus_holmes »

sambeau wrote: post #153
freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

Companies like Basecamp and Trello are here to prove that assertion wrong. Basecamp is in every fortune-500 company more than once and never officially. Why? Because you don't need IT to approve it first and it's price is just under what most managers can stick on their company credit card. One of Basecamp's mottos is "Do Less". It's also worth pointing out that the simpler the software, the more likely it is to fit…

Totally agree, but it takes a really strong product manager to stand up to a sales person with $10K in revenue from an enterprise buyer "if we just add this one feature they want".

The fact that the enterprise buyer doesn't actually need the feature, or could do it easier/cheaper/better is immaterial. A Purchasing Department worker in the enterprise is looking at your product and Product X, and Product X has that feature that some manager somewhere in the purchasing process said they'd like to have. They really like your product, but they can't justify picking it over Product X without that feature.

Telling salesfolk that they have to walk away from the sale they spent months cultivating is hard, and there are often board-level ramifications to doing it. The entire company has to be behind "Keeping it Simple", including the directors and shareholders. This is why these companies (and products) are rare.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#179

Post by java-man »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #75
java-man wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this with mobile phones in the 90's-2000's. Until Apple came up with the iPhone designed for the end users, the phones' buyers were the networks, not the end users. The same goes for companies like LinkedIn - they are now driven by recruiters and not the end users. Thus the idiotic interface and functionality changes that basically makes it unusable [to the most of the users].

Apple's iPhone also brought new UI/UX ideas and people that grow up with these phones/desktops now and judge everything by that standard vs. what was considered "working" way back when. Android and Microsoft helped too. This industry shifts fast, so it's really no surprise people come to hate the older stuff by looks alone.

As someone who wrote code for two mobile handsets for two different companies in the referenced time frame, I would say there was a noticeable lack of innovation in the handset business.

Except, perhaps, in Japan - where mobile handsets were way ahead in terms of design and features as compared with the U.S.

Which, I think, can also be explained by the fact that the handsets in Japan were marketed to the end users as opposed to the U.S. where the buyers were the network operators.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#180

Post by natural20s »

As an aside - the author of the post is Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan. I took his free Cryptocurrency course on Coursera and it was superb. He really broke down all of the concepts in an easy to understand way that has stuck with me for years.
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