‘Easonomics’ and the New Priority on Usability for Enterprise Software

Technology vendors love to focus on functionality. It’s the reason they develop solutions in the first place. Plus it’s easy to highlight unique features and draw a comparison to offerings from competitors. They feel most comfortable selling a ‘better,’ ‘faster,’ ‘leading,’ ‘top,’ ‘industry-leading’ widget.

But what good is better functionality if the right people are unable to use it? Exciting data visualization tools, campaign management features and big data integration are all meaningless if only a select few, highly trained individuals can take advantage of them.

In fact, usability is now emerging as a key differentiator for enterprise software. The continued trend to integrate strategic businesses apps — such as CRM with ERP, ERP with Supply Chain and analytics with almost every application – is fueling this.

The C-suite seeks more granular financial data and tools that present trends in a graphical format. HR wants to better understand productivity through access to apps across the business. And the customer service teams needs insight into the product pipeline. In short, the number of employees leveraging once stand-alone business applications is increasing. This puts a premium on usability.

Interestingly, the supply chain gives us one of the most poignant examples of this. Many apps are legacy based, some dating back a decade or more. Once the domain of a small team of supply chain managers, today executives across the enterprise are seeking access to supply chain data. But where the supply chain team is trained and accustomed to working with somewhat dated applications, other employees struggle. This limits access to the small core of people who know how to navigate what are often cludgy interfaces.

Our supply chain analyst, James Cooke, identified this challenge early on and has been a vocal advocate for improving usability of supply chain resources. Perception seems to be one of the biggest hurdles. Where functionality is tangible and easy to measure, usability feels soft to many developers.

To help vendors understand the strategic importance of usability, James coined the term ‘easeonomics.’ It’s actually a good term that forces vendors to consider the economic impacts of making their applications easier to use. Consider the costs of training employees to use supply chain applications. Then consider the loss of revenue by not training them. Then imagine a solution that is intuitive and provides easy access to employees who can now benefit from supply chain applications.
The real key is to view usability not as a soft benefit, but to see it as a strategic feature that adds to functionality – just as data visualization or analytics tools would. Businesses that can leverage their supply chain investment further into the enterprise will benefit more from the apps. And they will gravitate to vendors that provide more usable solutions. This is why ‘easonomics’ is a top Nucleus prediction for 2016.

View the full Nucleus Predictions for 2016 report here.

And it’s not limited to the supply chain. We are seeing this trend in analytics and business intelligence, CRM, ERP and even back-office apps. That’s not to say that vendors should focus on usability at the expense of functionality. They need to do both, which only ups the competition. Vendors that do not prioritize usability can deliver revolutionary new functionality and still fall behind. Even the most beneficial functionality is moot if the right people can’t use it.