A friend of mine recently opted to buy the Samsung Galaxy instead of the Apple iPhone - for various reasons.
Samsung Galaxy is not the same as the Apple iPhone, however, it is really quite good by itself. It runs on the Google Android platform. Samsung among many others is part of the Open Handset Alliance.
The alliance has mobile operators; handset manufacturers; software companies; semiconductor companies...
It made me wonder that over the years, the consumer space has become to open and collaborative; companies are partnering with each other in ways that make sense to come up with meaningful products and services to consumers in a very desirable manner.
In my eyes such alliances reflect the realization that one company cannot do everything on it's own.
On the other hand, in the enterprise world, I still see companies trying to build a lot of things internally - not opening up to team up with expert players and collaboratively working on shipping meaningful products and services to customers in a desirable way.
There is so much innovation happening in the consumer space, so fast, the enterprise world is merely catching up. I feel, the least we can do is partner with some of the players in the consumer space. I have heard the usual arguments of security, complexity bla bla often as reasons why the enterprise world does not work on this model. I am sure these are aspects that are very important in any kind of application.
I don't believe the enterprise is unique.
Just because a user is using an enterprise software, does he/she have to endure bad design?
Odd that you also mention the exception to open collaboration in Apple - the most meaningful, desirable products and services are created by the most closed, built-it-ourselves player? Interesting counter example...
ReplyDeleteAs to the final question "Just because a user is using an enterprise software, does he/she have to endure bad design?" Of course not! They do have to endure the fact that they don't get to make the buying decision, however, which definitely has the tendency to skew the design points to the buyer rather than the user...
I cannot say which is better - Open/closed. Which ever approach helps a company go so far ahead and consistently deliver excellence to their customers is fair. For Apple, it is being closed; for google, it is being open. Each are on a league of their own. There are very few companies that can do what each of them do as well as they do it.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about this distinction between decision makers and end users. The few times I have spoken to decision makers; they were feature hungry...not considerate about the efficiency of the features - which end users need.
Perhaps in our 'pitch' to the decision makers, we need to present our 'user studies' to make them aware of what their end users need to efficiently do their tasks. That their decision can have implications on costs like training/ longer time for a user to get productive with the system etc.
What the decision makers tend to demand - scalability, TCO, support etc should be a given. The feature list will eventually get delivered over time. However, if the features are not designed well and users cannot work efficiently with them, there is little they can do. Would be too expensive for them to rethink their decision.
Then there are measures like asking a local company to build a macro here and a small application on top of things etc - to find ways to counter bad design. Also leading to overhead costs.
These things are also the reality and decision makers need to be made aware of this (if they are not already)
I really like the concept of 'trial versions' that allow people to get a first hand experience of using a product before making a buying decision.
Finally, I think a 'well designed' product will be instantly adopted by people - decision maker/ end user...however else we'd like to call them.