The Devil is in the Detail
Matt Jessop
Senior Executive and Technology Innovator in Contingent Workforce Management and Talent Acquisition.
It's a cliche that many of us reference and instinctively believe to be true. However I've been pondering on the feasibility of factoring this into our decision making when choosing systems, to avoid much gnashing of teeth later on in the process.
This week I've been working with clients to tackle a couple of significant problems, where the system in question, to all intents and purposes, meets the business requirements. However a small number of granular details are causing significant issues in the practical application of the functionality. An example would be the inability to delete/disable/hide a job template in a particular VMS. A seemingly minor detail in an otherwise robust area of functionality, that is unlikely to come out in an RFP process. However the practical implications to a user are significant.
The challenge with these types of nuanced issues is the technology providers are under so much competitive pressure to produce ever more and better bells and whistles, striking a balance of investment and development resources with fine tuning the details of existing functionality is a very difficult call. I remember well a CEO of a technology provider I was working for many years ago, having a 'wide but shallow' product strategy, where the focus was on developing additional functionality as opposed to improving the existing functionality to be as good as it can be.
However it is difficult to criticise technology providers for perhaps getting this balance wrong when buyers don't focus their attentions as much as they should on a providers strategy and service. Preferring to focus on product features, ironically some of which will influence buying decisions but then never be implemented in practice.
The truth is it is impractical to predict every detailed requirement and factor in every functional nuance into a selection process. Picking a system that does allow job templates to be deactivated would address the issue I referenced above, but would probably lead to other challenges in different areas.
What is feasible is to consider a providers strategy and service as being as important in a selection criteria as the functionality their solution offers. Only when we start to do this consistently as buyers, will providers be forced to devote more energy and investment into the practical aspects of managing their systems.
Hmm Rickover would have pushed wide & deep. And leant on training to a very large degree. There is a facile attraction in the ease of use of consumer entertainment products, but these are casual tools, to be picked up and dropped again with no consequence or preparation. Professional tools are something else. They support skills and processes we build up over careers. There's nothing wrong in these being elegant and powerful, but the simple and easy is not necessarily the most appropriate. We at Human Made deliver systems based upon WordPress - a well known, generally usable tool. However, we deliver very large scale enterprise platforms based on this technology, and though the ease of use of the 'consumer grade' WordPress is an attractive part of the offering, we do find that there is at times an assumption that complex, complicated powerful features can be slotted in and be just as easy to use. Power vs Ease of use, even in the most finely honed UX, is a real balancing act.
Are you still relying on Excel for Budgeting & Forecasting?
8 年Excellent article well worth reading! When if ever will Corporate software be as user-friendly as your XBox?! Is there any point in having all the bells and whistles if you only ever use a very small percentage of them? And, in Corporates, how do you get buy-in to and use by everyone who should be using it? If, for example, senior execs are too posh to input, doesn't that sink even the very best software like Rickover's submarines?