systematic viewpoints

I’ve been watching the kerfuffle over Scoble’s post and chewing on the subject some more. As Thomas points out, we’ve been over this before but it still merits thought.

My perspective? I have little insight into how usability and interface refinements will make their way into ERP products as delivered because I don’t build the stuff. I’ve been responsible for implementing it, I certainly have had to use it, and now I make a fine living making it usable in big-ass companies.

I used to take the stance that there was no reason that enterprise software shouldn’t be any harder to use than transactions at Amazon, eBay or [your favorite e-tailer here]. Those sites buffer a lot of complexity and multiple integrations from us tender humans.

I can name 2 differences that matter. First, the effect of the money trail - if users of commerical interfaces can’t complete their transaction, revenue stops. The enterprise doesn’t always have that level of motivation, depending on the function in question. Second, I’ve yet to see an organization that has deep global processes. Of course certain processes are mandated into localized versions, but more often its a reflection of the M&A activity that grew the organization on top of the regional variations.

Most often, companies fund a ‘vanilla’ ERP deployment and hope that their users can get through some training. It’s a big challenge in global organizations to quantify the variability, organize all the assets, apply security and personalization and make the stuff easier to use. Given the lack of budget for usability features and the heavy lifting it takes, it’s little wonder that most organizations aren’t taking the steps necessary, but why aren’t they demanding better user experience from their enterprise software?

In most cases I think it’s because they too have been conditioned to think that it must be complex. Perhaps this comes down from the days when the computers were behind glass and their keepers wore lab coats. All too often the IT community projects a certain machismo around ERP usability:

• It’s non-essential, ‘nice to have’
• It’s a ‘training issue’.
• Not an issue, everything passed UAT.
• We delivered the user requirenments

Enterprises should share some of the blame and adding ease of use is to the features they’re requiring vendors to deliver. I’m seeing this begin to happen as ERP maturity evolves within companies. Users are speaking up, and in some cases where metrics are not being met it’s being linked to usability issues.

I’ve spent over half of the last 10 years helping enterprises get greater use of their ERP systems. Having been by turns a graphic designer, IT and development manager, user experience advocate and close ally of business, marketing and communications professionals and strategist mine is a particularly multidisciplinary approach.

I sense the beginnings of a change coming about, although I think it will be some time before it’s fully manifested in products and ultimately in the workplace. I’m still trying to hash this nascent trend out, so bear with me and please do call me out or remix these thoughts.

How did we end up here?
If I had to describe a typical ERP deployment (necessarily a fiction, there’s no such thing) , it would have the characteristics of an installation - scaled to the usage estimates, tuned to perform acceptably but not optimally under real-world conditions, configuration changes only, no customizations allowed by IT.

It took longer and cost more than projections. Business requirements were gathered but often ended up being deferred so the critical path could be cleared of dependencies that would incur further costs and/or delays, worsening the tension that already existed between the business audience and IT. A launch is achieved with one or two key business functions being supported. ‘Features’ are rolled out over multiple releases until all the intended functional solutions are live.

Now What?
What happens next is highly variable. Frequently budgets have been strained to the point where planned change management activities are scaled back or even eliminated in favor of some form of training. This is often remote and offered for a limited time after a launch event. Recorded training is available for new employees - if they can find it.

Professional users in the functional areas begin to struggle with the gaps between local procedures and the methodology of the system as delivered. Specific pain points arise: inconsistent data sources, multiple screens to perform single tasks, you name it. Workarounds abound - job aids and cheat sheets are circulated, and a body of underground tacit knowledge required to successfully perform job functions begins to arise. Eventually metrics begin to suggest that the ROI is not being met, and the blaming begins.

What’s to be done?
How it plays out depends on how the people responsible for the systems are rewarded. I’ve just re-read an interview with Donald Norman from 2000 where he took the usability profession to task for not understanding how business people typically get promoted, and emphasizing long-term benefits to the wrong audience. His point was if a manager gets a very narrowly defined task completed without making a mess of their P&L sheet for the year, they get promoted. Usability? Service quality? Benefit realization? Not my job - that’s for the next person to achieve.

Companies are frequently motivated to address problems arising from ERP deployments because senior management relies on them for critical processes and key data and they are not achieving the desired results. They assign that ‘next person’ to improve the system. Sometimes they call in folks like me.

Over time and through many engagements we’ve identified a spectrum of possibilities that improve in varying ways the business results that ERP supports, depending on a given company’s appetite for change and customizations. It’s not about user-centric design, although that’s a key component. It’s about tasks and goals and how people get through complex, lengthy processes. It’s about how the systems support the strategic goals of a company. Sorry to say, no system delivers that out of the box.

Vendors know the truth.
This challenge is very clear to ERP vendors. Their interfaces are brittle and monolithic; corporate IT experiences so much pain customizing and maintaining them that they have very compelling arguments against modifications. SaaS companies like Salesforce.com and Workday are invading their turf.

Oracle knows this, but they’re too busy rationalizing their product lines to be able to address it head-on yet.
SAP knows this and even though they provide tools for IT to tweak interfaces they are not used in may enterprises for the reasons above.

Change is coming…maybe.
One of the biggest challenges in any system is how to design for large numbers of people across many disciplines. Many of today’s applications try to accommodate just about everyone, creating extraordinary complexity. This applies as much to Microsoft Office products as it does to ERP. Word and Outlook are ‘feature-rich’ to the point of being ridiculous for must folks.

Other paradigms for improving the interface to ERP have been in play, most prevalent being the dashboard. They can be terrific for information consumers but they are often implemented with limited interactivity for decision support. A very compelling set of demonstrations was given at SAP’s Munich TechEd event showing interfaces and widgets that begin to decouple interactions and data manipulation from the ERP interface. Oracle and SAP both have dedicated groups looking at ways to exploit the best of Web 2.0 technologies and interfaces to the business solutions.

I’m not sure whether folks can cope with widgets floating around their computer desktops, monitoring data, work lists, or enabling faster/simpler transactions. But in general people prefer use-specific interfaces and devices over multipurpose ones. I commonly use the kitchen as a case in point. Your own kitchen probably has a range/oven, a microwave and some form of toaster-oven. 3 devices, all specialized interfaces for making food hot in a chamber.

Folks like Don Norman have envisioned more embedded computing and fewer general purpose systems in the future. In the last year specialized computing products have bloomed in the consumer space: digital picture frames at Target, iPhone and iPod Touch, Chumby. Perhaps the general public’s embrace of Web 2.0 interfaces (which seem to tend towards the single-purpose) is beginning to create sufficient demand that the product managers for ERP systems can contemplate adding them to feature sets. For some interesting insight into the dynamics of that process, see “Why 2.0 Didn’t Start in the Enterprise” by Paul Pedrazzi.

How does this impact the enterprise?
I see a shift away from the massive interface, the all-in-one portal and the soup-to-nuts dashboard in favor of compact, customizable and intelligent widgets, applets and services that can be called upon demand or pegged to a corner of the screen. I see a move away from the browser and the page paradigm that demands information architectures and navigation, towards a set of easily grabbed tools that I can use in combination or snap together like Lego blocks to solve my here and now business problem, and move on. The browser will still have it’s place because it’s a great interface for linear processes, but it will stop trying to be everything to everyone. I’m almost reminded of the March 1997 issue of Wired magazine, which breathlessly declared the death of the browser. I still have my copy.

When I watch the Demo Jam video I think that it’s some of the better thinking I’ve seen in this space in quite some time, but realistically speaking these innovations aren’t ready for general availability. Enterprises are often years away from major upgrades of ERP; in fact the days of the sweeping upgrade are probably past for many organizations. It’s incremental change that will be coming, so I don’t expect the landscape to change drastically in the next few years. But it’s an exciting trend and when these innovations begin to creep into the enterprise, I fully expect demand for more to rise.

Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Air and Mozilla Prism, that is. I wish I were clever enough to fit Yahoo Widgets into that title, but my brain just didn’t go there. In any case interesting things may be going on with interfaces. There’s a sudden confluence of ’solutions’ aimed at pulling experiences out of the browser. This has some positive aspects, the browser remains a page-oriented environment and it demands a degree of bending to it’s will. In the enterprise space, there is great appeal to detaching meaningful experiences from the monolithic approach that ERP delivers.

Is there a downside? I can imagine desktops becoming cluttered with multiple disparate interfaces (“You are in a maze of twisty little GUIs, all unalike.”) with a lack of context providing the conceptual or actual relationships between them. Do people even want to have all these little bits floating about? The proportion of folks who are able to manipulate their computing environments remains low, and I for one don’t believe that Millenials are somehow naturally equipped or even inclined to be more than consumers of services. In some quarters there seems to be an almost mystical attachement to the idea that young-uns are deeply skilled laptop Jedis. I’d like to see some real-world testing, my gut says that they can easily learn to use new apps and devices but they’re just as inclined to ignore customization as us dinosaurs. I grew up on TV, that doesn’t make me an expert on signal propagation or any other technical aspect of the medium. Just a consumer, sorry.

That said, I’m thrilled to see interest in alternative interfaces at places like SAP. I believe the real benefits will come when the UX and design people get to apply their disciplines. It feels like we’re at the start of some innovative thinking around enterprise application interfaces, and it’s about freakin’ time.

I had planned on a different subject today but Steve Mann’s bit on innovation in Able Brains touched something off. Read it, and then spend some time with his other writings, it’s been too long since I shilled his blog which is one of my regular reads.

There is a considerable gap between many company’s stated dedication to innovation as a competitive and growth lever and the eventual execution and product offerings. What passes for innovation in many places is too diluted to recognize. Steve offers some yellow flags:

“…if you work at an organization that doesn’t have a culture that (1) values innovation and (2) places governance, budget and resources around innovation - not that it never will but it may be a cold day in hell before Innovation becomes mainstream. Further, many top managers agree that corporate policy actually tends to offer limited incentives to innovation or limits it by placing an innovation team in a risk averse organization or business unit or having no plan to deal with failure other than to junk the team and start over. Some say this is a talent issue, other execs say its a cultural issue. The answer is “yes.”"

Couldn’t agree more. I worked in e-business organizations which were walled gardens. We were kept at arms length so as not to infect the general population and once a product was deemed to be sufficiently cootie-free it was sliced out and transplanted into the business. Today, increasingly regulated and scrutinized operating environments makes innovation look more like a risk to be managed. I’ve seen the talent issues run both ways. We may have leaders and managers who have been conditioned to drive risk out, but at the same time we experience few skillful innovators and far too many who claim to be visionary but end up being undisciplined or ineffectual at matching innovation to business benefits.

The aversion to innovate affects more than competitive advantage and growth. I often work with clients whose IT has sufficient control over how apps are deployed to push them into vanilla deployments because they’re managing risk in terms of not wanting to manage code bases or introduce customizations that add complexity to upgrades. The result is business heads who don’t get what they need out of systems, with functional professionals who are relegated to awkwardly aligned processes, managers and employees who need to perform basic tasks and are presented with systems that require hours of training to use. The aversion to innovate at even this simple level - let’s make our systems easier to use by our own - is a direct cause of this pain. Risk needs to have a 360 review process so a fuller measure of is made before a decision that leans towards benefiting a single area is taken.

Many of the portals I’ve worked on have had a complete lack of attention to the HR practitioner. The generic scenario is an enterprise intranet, often driven by an underlying portal technology, with a static and outdated HR presence oriented towards policy and benefit information and links.  These organizations are motivated to improve their HR offering and there’s no lack of energy around ESS and MSS integration, and plenty of thinking around how to balance centralized vs. decentralized employee programs.

When I recommend optimizing the experience for the HR professionals I find this has been given little to no thought, and that’s reflected in the environments I have seen for HRs, typically a password-protected sub-site with some stale documents and an unused discussion forum (”Test Message” and “Hello World” seem to be the common subjects) created to share a handful of sensitive documents, with little thought to making it easier for HRs to work together.

A couple of things - first,  it’s generally acknowledged that the ERP user experience is sufficiently difficult to require supplemental front end work at a portal interface layer, yet the expectation is that HR professionals ought to be able to deal with it. Why is that? Frequent/’power’ users of an application stand to gain a lot from optimization, and I frequently interview folks who demonstrate tasks that require high numbers of clicks, screen changes, data fetching from other sources, etc. Training doesn’t make awkward processes efficient.

Second, the value proposition of leveraging collaborative technology in the HR space hasn’t been connected to the ongoing transformation programs in place at most large enterprises. I commonly hear from professionals out in the businesses and regions that don’t have a good sense of what’s going on in Corporate, and they often feel that their local dynamics are either unknown of ignored. Corporate people often expresses that they feel disconnected from the field and have little visibility into who does what, where. Often HR operations is under pressure to reduce operating costs, making it appear counter-indicative to provide practitioners additional IT effort on top of the ERP systems that are already in place.

Contrast this with sales.  Here’s a function with similar needs: to rely on ERP but in this case a recognition that there is also a supporting data, historical information and a need for awareness of ongoing work efforts among their teams. Sales has always had a tacit social knowledge network supporting a set of individual practitioners performing against personal and group goals.  The big difference is that sales generates revenue and HR is an expense, and as such it’s managed quite differently.

The HR Professional portal should provide a functional workspace with information and tools that can be managed by a distributed workforce, centered around the areas that align to the business and corporate HR strategies and moves the value proposition away from the administrative formula. I’ve yet to see an organization that doesn’t get an ‘ah-ha’ moment when we talk about it but I have seen those that just can’t get it either funded of adequately staffed and developed. Where we are building them, they are in their infancy but I feel they will have high value as HR emerges as a strategic business partner over the next decade.

Came across this today. Read the entire post, I’m utterly humbled.

“With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.”

>Tracking code here, nothing to see.

Google Operating System reports today that Powerpoint attachments can now be previewed as slideshows in Gmail.

[Postscript - 22 June. Another nod to life in the cloud. Thanks to Google’s cached views of this blog I was able to restore the last few posts I made.]

When I left my last employer I made a strategic decision to continue my work with online applications. At the former workplace we used roaming profiles and server storage that was accessible remotely so the notion of my ’stuff’ being portable isn’t new. I’d already dabbled with Google apps and Zoho as well as Open Office as replacements for MS Office apps. Primarily because of the integration points I decided to focus on Google apps with Open Office as a backup if I needed more advanced features. It’s a purely personal choice - your mileage may vary and this is not an endorsement of any one product over the other.

I don’t do heavy text formatting nor am I an Excel jockey; given that I have to say that the online apps more than sufficed. For text I used Docs or Notebook depending on my intent - Notebook served for quick thoughts, logging running tasks and lists. Docs was for longer or more formatted items, Spreadsheets handled my basic tabular needs. I didn’t have to revert to Open Office at all. I am eager to see Google’s presentations solution - I flex PowerPoint heavily and the feature set is important to me.

When I traveled in Italy I everything I needed was at hand (unless I couldn’t get connectivity, which was rare). I recently got a new PC that I put in another location and as I was setting it up I thought how nice it would be if all my ‘legacy’ stuff was online rather than being sitting on a drive somewhere else. That made me realize that I’m shifting my focal point. My best photos, most immediate docs, reminders and notes are all in the cloud and now I wish it was all there for me.

Of course this approach isn’t a universal fit. There are challenges around document compatibility, sensitive data, compliance and regulatory concerns for enterprises. But no doubt that these will be resolved and the fact is we’re well on the way to a model of data retreivability and worker agility that eclipses the one we’ve been using for the last 30 years.

Thomas kindly gives us an overview of how SAP applies user experience (UX) discipline and practice in their product cycle. I’m always happy when he (or anyone) gets excited about UX.

At my new firm we get it big time. Tomorrow morning I take an early Acela Express to Philadelphia for a kickoff of an HR Portal strategy project. With me will be one of our senior UX consultants to demonstrate how we use extensive discovery of usability factors at the very beginning of a project to help drive our strategy - user interviews, surveys, data analysis and expert heuristic evaluations. She has equal standing with our technology lead and that’s a rarity. When UX is invoked it’s all too often closer to the finish line and nobody wants to make changes.

Thomas also touched on accessibility. Personally I think this one will become a compliance issue for companies sooner than they think. I predict it will not be long before general commercial entities will be required to provide accessible enterprise services in the same manner as governmental sites are currently. It’s not hard or expensive to accomplish accessiblity unless you find yourself in a crash course to remediate. Best practices in accessibility can be integrated into design and coding standards so it is a natural part of the process. Bottom line, it’s the right thing to do.

I use Google’s personalized home page. This week Google enabled ‘themes’, an interesting break in their graphical standards. I find myself wondering why they went forward with this - notwithstanding a few playful tricks they’re little more than window dressing. The selections are limited and lean towards the cartoonish. I’m not critiquing the designs; my point is that if Google is going to allow us to tweak the UI I’d like to see more substantial controls like allowing modules to span multiple columns for better readability or changing font sizes, backgrounds or colors on a per-module basis.