Why Enterprise Software Sucks: 6 Years Later

Nothing like broad sweeping generalizations to make a good story.<p>I have a few points to make :<p>1. End users have an incredible ability to complain that software doesn't meet their very specific and peculiar requirements at any point in time. "Why can't I print this expense report landscape on a5 paper, we have run out of normal paper" - "Why doesn't this expense report sub-total by supplier and week, but only in leap years?"<p>2. If the people using the software were the business owners I think they would sing a different tune, or go out of business because they spend so much money optimizing for user experience.<p>3. Enterprise software tends to be infinitely more complex than most Saas projects. It is hard to budget and focus on the user experience when you are processing billions of dollars in transactions, with complex business rules, complex tax rules, complex laws, integrating with legacy systems, changing business conditions and strategy. Most businesses will put compliance and accuracy ahead of user experience.<p>4. Non-enterprise developers seem to think they are shit-hot and have a chip on their shoulders about enterprise developers for some reason. So you get an endless stream of articles along these lines.

Enterprise software does not put a huge priority on attractive graphics and "discoverable" functionality, because people who use it very often tend to perform the same transactions over and over and over. Efficiency in this use case is far more important than e.g. something like HipMunk where someone who's never seen it before should be able to figure it out without any help.<p>I was recently at my insurance agent's office updating my automobile insurance coverage. The agent worked on a mainframe character mode interface and could absolutely BLAZE through the various options and quote different insurance options instantly. No dragging and dropping, no pointing and clicking -- her hands never left the keyboard. Looking at the screen, nothing really looked very pretty or intuitive. The system clearly would require some training or at least some instructions to learn how to use it. But it works really well once you invest that learning.<p>Then there are people in the enterprise who have to use this software occasionally... e.g. people who have to file an occasional expense report, or update their tax withholding. For those people it sucks, because there isn't a lot of hand-holding, and the software feels clunky and arcane.

The reason Enterprise Software sucks is customization. Customization makes it expensive, harder to test and impossible to upgrade.<p>However - Customization is what every Enterprise asks for. Sometimes they need it, sometimes they don't. Customers and vendors are notoriously bad at picking the difference.<p>SaaS offerings tends to be militantly "vanilla" with no customization. Customization kills the margin for SaaS vendors. Whatever you think of Salesforce in terms of their tech and approach -- this is the area where they excel.<p>You can blame the "Enterprise" as much as you like, but these are structural issues.

Also, it's complicated.<p>If I'm running a startup, and I have 100 customers using my product who each have a wishlist, I can prioritize which of those wish items fit best with my product and business vision, without excessive implementation cost or technical debt, and proceed on that path.<p>On the other hand, in the enterprise, non-technical managers make business requirements that are largely non-negotiable. Product complexity spirals out of control as everyone wants their "pet feature" included, even if it conflicts with other features, leading to massively customizable (and thus even more complicated, to implement that customizability) solutions.

This article claims that eventually, the companies will come around: that "Companies are entrenched in their systems and don’t dare touch it if it’s “working”" but eventually they'll come around.<p>Has anyone done any research on the opposite possibility: that most companies simply ossify around the "acceptable" enterprise software when they're newer, and don't so much adapt as die off, leaving room for more recently founded companies that aren't attached to some ancient system?<p>The difference is of critical importance to someone trying to sell into that market, it's the difference between being Mercedes and Unilever.

I think that a lot has to do with the writers and readers of those articles having inherent biases that cause them to associate small and pretty with good solutions.<p>I happen to fall into that camp and much prefer nicely designed Saas products to legacy bloatware but I have been astonished to see time and time again that other people I work with are not of like mind.<p>I once tried to convert my team to Asana because I love it for personal projects and I naturally expected them to compare it to our current methods and be blown away. I was surprised when it got nothing more than a "meh" reaction and within days it was forgotten. The team actually <i>preferred</i> SharePoint.<p>This also by the way is a case in point of why it is important to talk to customers before building. Your assumptions about what is best are not necessarily accurate. Small software sells well to small businesses and in a lot of cases small teams, but company-wide (which I think is what we're talking about here) takes a whole different level of sales and influence.

Enterprise Software is hard because the modeled enterprises are complex and very different to each other.<p>This is a completely different beast than your toy App on your phone.

Before mobile apps can really become a model for enterprise software, their level of sophistication is going to have to go up: Plug-ins, sync rather than CRUD-over-IP, better use of Android modularity tools including ContentProvider components, bound services, more intent filters, etc.<p>Right aspiration, but not enough great examples yet.

I work in Enterprise Software. What you said has relevance in some companies, and is completely different in others. Really hard to make broad generalizations like that.<p>Mobile Apps are now a huge part of Enterprise Software. Adoption rates are high in the younger people, and lower as the age climbs.<p>The average age of the people in the vertical (Retail vs. Oil and Gas) have much more to do with the adoption rates than Enterprise Software vs. startups.<p>There's a lot more I could speak to, but I don't agree with so much of your premise that it's hard to figure out where to focus.<p>Even the questions aren't clear. Should we focus on ERP/CRM systems as the basis of the question, or across the whole enterprise? They are very different questions with different answers, and adoption rates.

Good enough is the enemy of perfect.<p>One of my duties is managing my company's backup systems. We use NetBackup, and despite it having a pretty old codebase underneath, it works fairly well. However, its interface is right out of 1998. Usability features you would expect in a modern program are just missing.<p>Where it shines is in its ability to script/automate a lot of tasks. Users who only use the GUI are surprised to see that their list of annoyances aren't really valid; NetBackup just doesn't put as much emphasis on shiny.