"Enterprise Software Bereft of Soul" WE HAVE AN APP FOR THAT

In his excellent and highly recommended blog, Vinnie Mirchandani discussed a quote by Dave Giroud of Google:

“Enterprise software is entirely bereft of soul”

Most enterprise software developers know this, and it can be mental torture to know that you work in an industry that seems so...well...soulless, so un-sexy, yet with so much un-realized potential.

Let's take a moment to consider that the New Wave of Revolutionary and Magical Mobile Tools (from Apple, and very soon, from a raft of other heavy hitting vendors) could be just the thing to spice up the enterprise industry.

To be blunt, we think that mobile tablets and smartphones are exactly the right tools to dramatically improve enterprise software...to add sex appeal and usability and to solve long-standing, significant pain points for customers.



[7/23/2010] Vinnie's new book: an amazing read:

Design 1: Not Just "As Good" But Dramatically Better

Designing ERP software for the iPad, part 1:

Make iPad version dramatically better than legacy systems.

ERP apps that are being ported over to the iPad/iPhone platform shouldn't aim to just duplicate the functionality of windows/keyboard platforms. iPad versions should be dramatically better, in the sense that they should leverage the unique features of this unique platform. They should take advantage of:

• Mobility
• Real-time business optimization
• Mobile capable workflow
• Slick user interface
• Form factor
• Location-based optimization of all types
• Bar code scanning, bluetooth data collection, video, audio, and photo

We hope to get into more detail in later posts.
Does this mean that any and all types of corporate applications should be converted to excellent iPad versions? Probably not. There is a certain class of users who are well suited to tablets. These target users have a certain set of functions they need. Any vendor porting enterprise applications to the iPad needs to start by choosing those target user functions, and create a "mini" version of the application for iPad.

Link: Why the iPad Absolutely Matters

Great article on ZDNET called "Why the iPad absolutely matters."

Although it's an educator, it applies to business as well. This clearly describes both the personal and organizational improvements of a mobile computer tool that travels easily and records data in "real time."

With the iPad, teachers can now easily walk around and record the information on an ongoing basis. Have you ever watched a teacher rotate around the room to observe student work with a netbook or laptop? It is cumbersome and artificial. The focus is always in the end on the hardware and not the student work. There is a stop point at which they need to put the machine down and type in it. With the weight, design, and simple kinaesthetic input, teachers literally can input 3-4 taps and have recorded all of the student’s information while maintaining focus and providing verbal feedback to the child.

What's the Opportunity for ERP and iPad?

The opportunity for ERP vendors and IT managers is as follows: to use the iPad and iPhone system to double the number of satisfied users of enterprise applications.

Key points:

1. A large subset of corporate users have laptops and workstations but don’t use them to access enterprise applications. This “resistant user” group comprises on average 50% and in many industries as much as 80% of the potential user base in a given organization. They are the doctors, nurses, retail store managers, shift supervisors at factories, sales managers at insurance companies, and scientists in laboratories. You name an industry, we will find users who can’t easily access or properly maintain the enterprise applications that their IT departments have so painstakingly installed.

2. Why? Because the systems are too hard to use for busy executives…too many features, and the features are designed more for data entry or clerical employees. From a purely physical standpoint, our executive users are “semi mobile” – they walk around a lot, and carrying (or using) a 6-pound laptop with a clumsy keyboard entry process is simply not viable.

3. However these users WILL happily use the system if they are given a 1-pound tablet they can carry in place of a clipboard (a very friendly form factor) which does not have the problems of prior tablet computers, and which has been connected in an optimum fashion to the existing enterprise application (not reproducing the poorly designed interfaces, but creating an entirely new, more human friendly and more agile interface, accessing the same database but with an interface optimized for the modern age). With this approach, you hit the “tipping point” of this user, and they jump on board with the enterprise software.

4. Is this easy or fast? Of course not. Is it worth is? Well, who wouldn’t like to double the number of effective users?

Prediction: iPad's Biggest Market Will Be ERP

Pundits are debating the biggest market will be for the Apple iPad. Will it be games or e-reading? But we think the biggest market for the iPad will be enterprise/ERP, software, human resources, finance, and customer management systems like those sold by industry giants SAP and Oracle.

The enterprise applications market is ripe for change. User adoption and satisfaction rates are dismal; customers have spent multiple millions of dollars and don't use even a fraction of the functionality; IT departments end up being blamed. It's a crisis for the entire industry.

The underlying problem with the enterprise applications market is user interface. The paradigm of enterprise software is to sit immobile in front of a terminal and enter a lot of codes and data. But that's just not the way people work any more. That is like going back and using the old mainframes. That paradigm assumes that the business functions change very slowly, if at all, which is no longer true. Large organizations change rapidly now, and the old style of software isn't keeping up.

We've studied this problem over several years and believe the iPhone and iPad will become the catalysts for change in this market.

Here is what's happening in hospitals. Doctors and nurses are adopting the iPhone, voting with their feet, and now jumping on the iPad too. They're using these tools for significant daily work, real patient and medical data management. We realized that these are enterprise data entry problems they are solving. The mobile paradigm, the Apple design with it's effortless user interface, provides a new approach to computing on a corporate scale, with less detail and less micro-management of workflow, but with massive and enthusiastic user participation. It's a completely different way of looking at enterprise computing.

Will the big vendors like SAP and Oracle re-write their product lines to fit the iPad and other upcoming tablets? It's likely, because in doing so they will gain market share. In the past they converted from DOS to Windows-based and Windows to web-based. This will be the third big re-write, from web-based to mobile.

ERP and iPad Part 1: Problems in ERP Industry

The ERP (enterprise application) market for large corporate software, one of the 3 largest sectors of software sales, is in big trouble, and has been for a long time. This isn't news to people in that industry...it is continually discussed. Here's a good summary article in CIO Magazine.

"The survey, based on the ERP experience of 214 business executives across a wide variety of midsize and larger industries, found that today's ERP systems "are not providing businesses with the architectural agility necessary to support businesses adequately in today's high-change, global environment."

That's not too shocking. But what is notable about the results (and what makes them different than your garden-variety ERP study that shows sky-high TCO, or application performance problems, or unfavorable implementation odds), is that this survey actually quantifies ERP system-related failings directly to business disruption—expensive, unpleasant and career-killing business disruption.

"Survey respondents said that the inability to easily modify their ERP system deployments is disrupting their businesses by delaying product launches, slowing decision making and delaying acquisitions and other activities that ultimately cost them between $10 million and $500 million in lost opportunities," according to the survey report. (That's a substantial gulf in "lost opportunities," but we'll chalk that up to the size differences in companies surveyed.)

That related impact is costly: 21 percent of respondents reported declines in stock price; 14 percent suffered revenue losses tied to delayed product launches; and 17 percent encountered declines in customer satisfaction.

A couple of verbatim responses from respondents should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up: "Capital expenditure priorities are shifted into IT from other high-payback projects" just to perform necessary ERP changes, noted one respondent. Said another: "Change to ERP paralyzes the entire organization in moving forward in other areas that can bring more value."

How can the iPad and iPhone help fix this ERP industry problem? That's the question that our group has been studying and will discuss more in future posts.