By Ranjit Satyanath, CIO, Infiniti Retail
I have often wondered why we balk at the prospect of having to work on a new enterprise application. IT project teams have to conduct extensive training and workshops during the rollout phase and even then they cannot take adoption as a given especially if their rollout is competing with Excel.
On the other hand, in our personal lives we can’t have enough apps to try out and play with and the only problem we seem to have is the space on our device. Even on home PCs & laptops, we have several sophisticated applications like movie and image editing software, high-end games, and applications for sound editing that have more than a simple learning curve.
The dichotomy exists for the following reasons:
Need
Enterprise applications are thrust upon us often by Project Teams that do not spend adequate time with the end users or involving them enough in the design phase. The result is a solution that often only partially solves problems but is sure to create new ones. These issues then require additional phases to resolve. In some cases if the project does not get any traction the result is an Orphan Application.
User Experience
Personal Applications have great UX. The colour schemes, font size, wire-frames and other aspects are usually designed by experts. On the other hand, Enterprise Applications seem to be designed for nerds. In their defence, while the enterprise has started to give importance to this aspect the scale has not yet started to kick in. Building great UX requires investments of time and money. How many times have we heard the timeline mandated when the need for a solution is articulated? The project team is advised to work backwards and deliver it within the stipulated period – much akin to setting the marriage date before the courtship has even begun.
No prizes for guessing which aspect is taking the hit here.
Speaking of hits, the other thing that mostly gets side-lined is the testing process. Most projects would assign time for testing functionality and data accuracy. However, regression testing, browser, multi-device and battery drain tests (for mobility projects) are not yet the norm in very many enterprise implementations. All of this leads to a less than desired end user experience.
Scalability
Enterprise Applications are designed to leverage the best hardware available. Personal Applications are designed to also work on even very low-end devices. Due to this approach, most users get a favorable user experience if they possess a mid-line device. Also, Personal applications go through several rapid upgrades with each version squashing a batch of bugs and adding functionality. Customers get a sense that they are getting better app every time they upgrade. Enterprise application release cycles are much more modest and their users have to wait longer for their problems to get resolved.
Enterprise applications are built for security – probably rightly so. However very often while building Enterprise applications, processes are designed to address some border line security risk which has impacts on performance, screen design and overall usability.
Customization
Enterprise applications due to their very nature allow high degrees of customization which personal Applications don’t. This is a double-edged sword because too many organisations end up customizing the soul out of a COTS application which has impacts on the OOB User Experience that it came with.
Finally, Enterprise Applications are designed to get work done and most personal applications are intended for play to towards accomplishment of a personal goal or objective. If Enterprise IT teams approach their development cycles giving equal importance to their users as they do to functionality, security and project management, adoption of Enterprise Applications could be a lot faster.
