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Why Enterprise Software Sucks
281–290 of 570 posts
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
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Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#283This is missing a big part of the dynamic. Much enterprise software is what Joel Spolsky describes as "internal software"[0]: > Internal software only has to work in one situation on one company’s computers.… Here usability is a lower priority, because a limited number of people need to use the software, and they don’t have any choice in the matter, and they will just have to deal with it. Speed of development is mor…
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Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#284I 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've worked in enterprise software for 15+ years. Enterprises don't have complex and unique workflows, they generally have lazy and shitty workflows because people don't care.
The reason why enterprise software sucks is many-fold. My top reasons are the following:
1) Enterprise customers spend a lot of money and thus demand a lot from its suppliers. Sales and PMs and VPs will do whatever it takes to make their numbers and make their bonuses, so they will sacrifice software architecture for customer happiness. I'm not saying this is wrong, but it's the reality.
2) Software shouldn't exist for 20 years. Imagine writing a book where the authors change every 2-3 years, and the incentive was to write the best chapter and then leave afterwards. By the end of the book, it's probably going to be a shitty book.
The only pieces of software where it works are things like operating systems like Linux where you have someone like Linus who really does care and has been around since the beginning. Even Microsoft fell into this trap, look at Windows Vista which was a disaster.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#285I 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…
This makes sense. Given my experience in tech startup land, im going to take a stab at how this happens from inside the company. Lets say you are starting sn enterprise saas company, woohoo! You have your initial product and customers love it, yes! Things are starting to hum along nicely. Now your sales people are identiying new markets and saying “hey if we add feature x and y, we can make $x million more per year f…
"Theres no overrulin g UX voice that can say “no, dont build that feature because theres no way to maintain the delightful user experience”"
This was arguably Steve Jobs key role at Apple.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#286Let's take this a step further. Why are the feature checklists used? Because the schools are mandated to pick the lowest bidder through an RFP process. Not the best value, not the most usable, just the lowest bidder. The checklists were introduced as a metric to avoid wasting software that wouldn't meet the users needs, but for years ed-tech companies have optimized for meeting the checklist in the cheapest bottom-of-the-barrel way possible.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fea…
>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".
Lol, let's be realistic. If a PM is in the situation to decide that and does so, in a few days he'll find himself in a meeting with some higher ups to discuss how to find a way. (Unless of course 10k is insignificant for the company and there's already a hard roadmap for higher value projects.)
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d bet good money Watson got sold to a bunch of companies who wanted “AI” then they didn’t do anything useful with it. It was a smart play by IBM, the sales guys want to say AI and machine learning, so give them some generic crap which gets loosely integrated into parent projects and they can have a field day on the phone selling it. Watson would be a perfect study on modern big business software that these billion…
I'm almost certain that Watson was a series of Python and Prolog "scripts" that were packaged together with big black boxes, blue lights, tagged as AI, and run through the IBM sales and marketing machine. The result was huge margins for IBM and customers scratching their heads afterwards.
Watson was the World's Greatest CS PhD Thesis.
Not so great as an actual business.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
No serious enterprise uses gsuite , it's a small businesses tool. iPhones and smartphones in general have greatly increased the risk of data theft or being spied. Insurance companies are more than happy that others have switched to smartphones (I worked in insurance consulting for cyber risks)
BBVA is a bank with 140,000 employees, and they use G Suite. Office 365 and G Suite aren't small business tools anymore.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#290I 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…
Enterprises think they need and exert more control than they need. I think companies perform better with less rigid “do it this way because.” It’s fascinating how enterprise staff follow processes they don’t understand to get an outcome and don’t know why. I can frequently get better service than my IT staff from free tier consumer stuff. I hear “security” blah blah blah but the security on gmail is better than any l…
I don't know about gmail vs outlook, but I think security is often a valid concern. B2B products are usually built with a heavy emphasis on the security side of the security-convenience tradeoff. B2C products tend to be more convenience focused. You can have a B2B or a B2C product that is both convenient and secure, but that certainly isn't guaranteed, particularly for young products.
For instance Slack is great IMO, but they only introduced bring-your-own-key earlier this year (a requirement for security-serious companies).