This guy got it completely wrong.
Why Enterprise Software Sucks
41–50 of 570 posts
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#42I'm not sure where this originates from, but the most succinct definition I've heard for "Enterprise Software" is that the person who pays for it isn't the person who uses it.
If anyone even uses it at all!
I have a friend who works in a sales role for IBM. He told me that part of his bonus is contingent on being able to prove that the customer has actually installed the software which they bought.
The policy apparently arose because certain public sector entities had refused to consider new deals since they still hadn't got round to installing the software for which they had paid millions of dollars, years before.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#43Pretty true. For example, some of the worst applications I have ever used are by far timesheet applications. It's a product with a completely captive audience, that cannot go to the competition. If you don't fill your timesheet, you don't get paid its that simple. Typically these are either built-in house, or are an expensive third party product with terrible usability, bought by managers who might not even have to u…
Ditto with job applicant portals. They have a bunch of weird features for doing obscure HR stuff like internal approval chains, but terrible UX for the actual applicant. Would it be so hard to handle applicants whose resume is a url?
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#44I 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…
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.
Yeah me too, I find MS Word very useful too tbh. Not sure why higher level comment thinks people hate them.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#45I 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…
> 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.
Bingo—the dysfunction of the software reflects the dysfunction of the organization.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#46This is changing though. A fair number of solutions such as Slack are easy enough to use and get a hold of that teams within large enterprises can simply start using them.
The problem that companies like Slack face in making inroads in enterprise is that companies like Microsoft dominate the market, and can offer entire suites of products at a discount to keep customers exclusive to their platform. Microsoft has it’s own internal chat tool (which is terrible), but this strategy keeps their clients locked in while the buyers stay happy
Pretty much this. We had a stint on Slack in our enterprise. We kept asking for full licensing for it, but the higher ups moved everyone to Microsoft Teams instead. It's not lacking against slack in any way. It really just comes down to if you like the UX, which I don't like for either Slack or Teams.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#47I 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…
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.
I was a workshop at the google office in Toronto a while back, and people asked when Google sheets would be able to perform big data analysis.
The presenter looked confused, and then the group asking the question clarified that their big data workflow involves loading millions and millions of records into excel and they would have trouble migrating to google cloud until google sheets could match excel in performance.
Somewhat unrelated story, but it shows how well loved some software is, and how some users will take it to use cases you never imagined.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#48I used to work in support at a big company. We went through endless Salesforce resigns with folk's who don't use them all making decisions and patting themselves on the back for each redesign. It was horrific as a user experience, everyone is a UI expert and had an opinion based on this one time a thing happened... 3 years ago... In fact most every decision was made dude to some anecdotal incident where the person wh…
CRM products tend to be super easy to customise, so they often end up a complete mess simply because it is so easy to add or change stuff.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#49Not sure about the generalization to enterprise software in general, but the critique of people choosing blackboard is spot on. Before selecting a tool, professors should always ask: "is this the tool that two recent graduates would choose without my intervention?". Because to use any other tool is to deprive your students of skills they'll likely need. Also: > Once profs and students put down the pitchforks, committ…
Every popular computer OS except android has an ssh client now. Just give the students and professors shells and have them put the documents in shared folders.
Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks
#50I used to work in support at a big company. We went through endless Salesforce resigns with folk's who don't use them all making decisions and patting themselves on the back for each redesign. It was horrific as a user experience, everyone is a UI expert and had an opinion based on this one time a thing happened... 3 years ago... In fact most every decision was made dude to some anecdotal incident where the person wh…
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