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Why Enterprise Software Sucks

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Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#561

Post by heeen2 »

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…

SAP migrations often fail after millions invested because SAP prescribes a business model and if you want to change it you'll pay out of the nose for consultants trying to tailor it to your special snowflake business

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#562

Post by closeparen »

cipher_system wrote: post #512
Aeolun wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing expenses is only a pain because my company doesn’t trust me when I tell them I spent $20 on a meal. And have to give them both a digital, and then physical (signed!) receipt.

It's annoying and could probably be made easier, but these things are required by law. Also, not everyone can be trusted and it's not easy to tell.

Definitely not. We require digital images only, and not even an image is required for corporate card transactions under a limit.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#563

Post by collyw »

vetinari wrote: post #195
collyw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Often they understand Access, they just don't have it. Office Standard and Home & Business SKUs are without it, you need Office Professional Plus. Because it costs few hundred more for just Access and Skype, most workers will get the Standard one.

You actually need to understand the basics of relational databases in order to use Access effectively (unless you are only using a single table - in which case you might as well use excel).

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#564

Post by yiyus »

kragen wrote: post #547
fma wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine photoshop has had it for a long time. I do raw photography very sparingly and barely know photoshop. Literally one of the first thing I wanted to do was batch operations on a set of photos in which the lighting and camera setting were exactly the same. A quick Google revealed it is frequently used.

Photoshop hasn't even existed for a long time yet.

Well, not in geological terms, but I would say that 30 years for a piece of software is a quite long time.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#565

Post by proto-n »

addisonj wrote: post #156

Disclaimer: I work at Instructure, the company that makes the LMS Princeton is moving too. Opinions are my own, etc First things first, Blackboard is some of the worst of enterprise software and a huge part of why they have lost so much market share is not only because they had a difficult and obtuse to use product, it is also because they were extremely aggressive in buying out any competition and EOLing their produ…

Do you have any recommended reading on how to do this? Or even just a name for it?

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#566

Post by Kaiyou »

investinme wrote: post #128
Kaiyou wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I yearn for a command line image editor. ImageMagick is nice, but it can't do everything. Once you've gone cli, it's hard to go back to gui applications, since they're so inefficient.

You can only say this if you have a very limited imagination of what "image editor" is. Please explain to me how you imagine creating a mask around a human so that you can "extract" him from the background in the command line.

I don't really know what "mask" and "extract" mean in this context. If you mean arbitrary selection of shapes then I have a couple of ideas how it can be accomplished. For mouse use I know the theory of arbitrary shape selection, but I never can get it quite right, since moving the mouse around the shape is very difficult for me.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#567

Post by throwing838383 »

MarcScott wrote: post #364

I worked at a school that used the Frog VLE. There was a big push for us to use it for student assessment. I tried, I honestly did. 1. I used it to set homework assignments. 2. .py files were blocked and students couldn't upload them. 3. They submitted code as .txt instead. 4. I'd click on my class to view submissions, it showed the top 5 submissions. 5. I'd click on a submission and it would download. 6. I'd view th…

The real problem is that the people who decide to use the software are not the ones actually using it. This is the problem with top down decision making. And this is why enterprise software often sucks

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#568

Post by Goladus »

nradov wrote: post #220
Goladus wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any application which deals The problem here is putting the cart before the horse and expecting the software to implement policies for you. If you can't design a workflow to work and be compliant without new software, you probably do not know enough about your own workflow to purchase software that will actually improve it.

Those workflows are typically mandated and can't be significantly changed without incurring compliance problems.

Not as typically as you might think.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#569

Post by a-mlw-walker »

ridaj wrote: post #526
TeMPOraL wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's maybe another way of showing that UX is not the winning differentiator in enterprise that it is in consumer. But it is. That and useful features. Both of which Office has, and GSuite has not. I don't remember the name of that "Word lite" program that was included with Windows for free around Vista/7, which could open less sophisticated .doc files and was a default binding for .rtf files. But compared to Micr…

I have worked in enterprise for 20 years and have always been watching the vast majority of my colleagues (by the numbers) struggle to make anything but basic use of Office. My experience has been that there are a few advanced users who enjoy the mastery of it enough that they know it inside out, but the majority of enterprise workers really just do pretty basic stuff with it. Meanwhile, the killer app of G Docs (col…

Hey, I'm looking into a solution to this problem, I wondered if there was a way to DM you about your experience? I've been working on something and would love to hear thoughts around how people solve this where gDocs etc don't. Thanks

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#570

Post by sshadmand »

I was surprised to not find a single instance of "fear" or "accountability" in all the comments. The major driving force in "Big Enterprise" is putting a price tag on "are you prepared for something to go wrong." Either with bad actors, stupid mistakes, or lack of resources. The overhead and settings required to increase or decrease how much exposure the customer is willing to take is what drives the indu$try. That being said, I don't disagree with a lot of the comments. There is definitely the case of over engineering, but that is a bi-product of a business having to decide between making money or turning away a customer. Great companies have kept it simple while steered their users toward simplicity (which drives down cost and errors for all parties).
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