5 reasons to invest in improving the User Experience of your business applications

User Experience (UX) is one of the multiple buzzwords currently circulating in the IT world. The spread of nice and easy to use mobile applications has made UX one of the most critical areas for success in B2C application development.

Although without the same strength, User Experience is also quickly becoming a key aspect of business applications. Gone are the days where (almost) all that mattered was product functionality and IT architecture. Today, having a nice and intuitive interface is a fundamental feature in B2B software.

Now, does investing in improving the User Experience really have a ROI? Shouldn't we just use the same money in increasing the functionality, adapting to new changes, etc? Well, you may need to do both, but in case you need to choose, there is no reason why User Experience should be automatically postponed. Here are the key reasons why a better User Experience is a good investment:

1.- Productivity

If you have ever conducted a stress testing on a business application, you may know that in most cases a big part of the transaction time is spent in what is normally called "user think time". This is the time spent by the users in thinking what to do next, locating the functionality in the system, searching for information, typing in the data, etc.

I do not have average figures of how much of the transaction time is "user think time", but based on my experience, I would place this average around 80% of the transaction time on normal ERP transaction. This has an obvious consequence. If we reduce the "user think time", we reduce the overall transaction time and therefore we increase throughput and productivity. Building an easy to use and intuitive application is then directly related to your business productivity.

2.- Increase User Adoption

Most of today users access daily to mobile and web 2.0 applications. Using one of these applications and then coming back to your traditional ERP may almost be traumatizing for some users. Ok, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but certainly if your business application looks old, slow and/or difficult to use, the users will be less motivated to engage with the system and enter data. For certain type of applications, user adoption is a critical success factor. For instance, if you deploy an HR self service application but it is so complex to use that your employees continue to call the Human Resources department, then you may consider that the implementation has failed.

A better User Experience attracts the attention of users and invites them to use your business applications. This eventually can turn in better and more timely updated data. Is it not on of the main goals of business applications?

3.- Deployment

You may have faced the situation where you build a functionality in your business application and gradually deploy it to the organization departments. One of the most time and resource consuming activities in this gradual deployment is end user training. Having an easy to use application may not only reduce but also eliminate the need for training, practically making deployment a faster activity.

4.- Application Support

If your business applications are easy to use, your application support help desk will certainly receive less calls/tickets. Building applications having User Experience is one of the most effective ways to reduce support costs and the Total Cost of Ownership.

5.- Decision Support

Let's face it. Still a big part of the organizations upper management has very limited IT knowledge. Have you heard of a requirement to build a report so it can be generated and then sent by email to the upper management because they do not know how to run it by themselves? I may have been unlucky, but it happened to me multiple times.

By making your application more intuitive, you can engage you upper management in its usage. This means that they will have online access to reporting information and their decisions will be based on real time information as opposed to frozed PDF or Excel files sent by email.

Where do I start?

You may say, ok, User Experience may be important, but should I change my current application because it is ugly and counterintuitive? Well, the first step is to make sure you are getting the most of your application. For instance, many of our PeopleSoft and JD Edwards are using just half of the User Experience enhancements delivered in the last years, including work centers, mobile applications, dashboard, activity guides and so on. Make sure you get to know your current application potential and then try to maximize its usage. If your application is not improving, you may want to consider alternatives. One good way to achieve this is to use cloud applications for the modules for which User Experience is more critical (for instance: self service and analytics), interfacing with you backend system.

One way or the other, there is a solution that will allow you to improve your business applications' User Experience. Giving User Experience the right importance is the first step in finding this solution.