Several years ago, famous blogger, Robert Scoble, made outlandish statements about enterprise software that started a heated discussion and culminated in author, Nick Carr, declaring the debate a “FIRESTORM!”
Also read:
“Enterprise software won’t get you laid”
Sexy enterprise software, part two: SAP and Workday
Robert Scoble doesn’t understand enterprise software
Five principles of sexy enterprise software
Once again, Robert goes berserk on this topic, comparing a deep enterprise application (Workday) to a lightweight consumer tool (Expensify). After expressing shock and outrage that the little Expensify app better meets his expense reporting needs than industrial strength Workday, Robert exclaims:
This is how sucky enterprise software gets chosen. The people who choose it are choosing the software that makes THEIR lives easier, NOT the lives of everyone else in the enterprise.
Four years have passed since those fateful days of FIRESTORM, but apparently, little has changed. Despite the increasing convergence of IT and consumer technology, even smart folks like Robert Scoble still misunderstand enterprise software.
If you are brave enough to handle it, here’s a video Robert in which Robert conflates enterprise and consumer software:
Enterprise vendors like Workday, SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite build solutions that serve a broad range of business processes and functional areas inside large organizations. To be useful in an enterprise environment, the software must integrate deeply (and hopefully seamlessly, but that’s another issue) with many existing systems. Enterprise technology must also scale, offer robust security, high reliability, and so on. In contrast, consumer tools typically perform little more than a single function based on a very small set of features.
Enterprise solutions and consumer tools are not the same. Robert’s discussion of Workday and Expensify, well intentioned though it may be, compares a broad enterprise system with a small utility program. When Scoble extrapolates assumptions about enterprise software based on a tiny subset of features in Workday, he commits a logical fallacy and falls prey to an attractive, but wrong, “sin of convenience.”
In fairness, however, Robert raises an excellent point. Ideally, the user experience of enterprise software should be best in class on par with consumer apps. Because enterprise technology must retain deep, backend integration along with business process richness, accomplishing this goal is hard. Few vendors are up to the challenge, which is one reason enterprise software is so often difficult to use.
Scoble’s complaints are also ironic because Workday offers the best overall user experience among the major enterprise vendors; the company’s iPad app is also excellent.
That said, we all know that entering expenses is a pain in the ass and little Expensify does it really well – Workday should indeed look and learn.
Advice to all enterprise software vendors: Redouble efforts to offer best-in-class user experience while retaining the enterprise substance that makes you indispensable to virtually every major organization on the planet.
(Cross-posted @ IT Project Failures Blog RSS | ZDNet)
This enterprise mentality, full of dogma and heavyweight processes is what’s really wrong with IT.
Look at the new startups and look at how they adapt to rapid changing markets, fierce competition. You’ll see the reality that will be knocking on all these big companies doors in a few years.
“This barrier-to-entry for new businesses and technology firms is being significantly reduced by availability of “on-demand “everything (resources, infrastructure, bandwidth, capacity and so on). Unlike yesteryears, setting up a software company today can be done quickly, easily and inexpensively. Technology trends are changing and survivors will be those that are able to step out of the “Enterprise” mentality and adapt emerging trends; to not only survive but thrive!”
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
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[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] when Robert Scoble says enterprise software isn’t sexy, he’s mostly right. But this is changing rapidly. The category is shedding its slowness and [...]
[...] amazing number of people seem to think thatenterprise software is not sexy. However, there are some that dont agree. We side with guest author and CEO of box.net Aaron Levie, [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy (or dynamic). Understandably so. It [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy (or dynamic). Understandably so. It [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, [...]
[...] demand a radically different user interface, one that breathes ease of use and really pops. Scoble (and a few million others) have said that enterprise software isn’t sexy. Understandably so. It isn’t. After all, for [...]