Removing the Dread from Internal Enterprise Systems

The main issues with enterprise systems is that their switching costs are really, really high, the return on investment for switching is much lower (unless the product itself is enough of a savings to justify the switching costs) and some regulators impose very specific requirements on them that make using alternatives willy-nilly difficult.

Also, these systems were modern when the company bought them and are often not maintained by the company itself (i.e. outsource SAP support to SAP consultants or Wipro). It is also common for a non-technical executive to authorize these kinds of purchases, though this is changing (which is great). For them, the brand matters a lot. ("Nobody's been fired for picking IBM.")

Also also, the consumers of these products don't really care about the dread involved in using them until the pain begins to affect their career directly. And when that happens, it will become ITs job to work around the dread while keeping the product instead of replacing it outright.

By the way, terrible internal tools are rife in every industry, including tech. Google has some really, really shitty looking internal tools for core production services. For example, their bug tracker (Buganizer, as of two years ago) was a HUGE pain in the ass to use compared to Github. I am surprised that nobody went ahead and Material Designed it as a promo project.

I think one of the main causal mechanisms is that corporate cultures do not associate internal tooling with revenue, directly. It is seen as a small cog in a large engine that just has to work. It isn't seen as something that would directly impact customers or drive ROI. So.. they end up being neglected and extremely terrible.

I work on enterprise systems for a living and the article is "skinny"; most of my clients are keen to progress to something more, for want of a better word, digital.

The fault is with the trusted large consultancies, who are still focussed on large deals for COTS products that have essential core models (ERP/MRPII, EDMS, CRM/Automated Selling, etc.) - they're changing but all too slowly - and often comically, into areas such as bitcoin, AI and VR - when some simple design thinking and user centred design would be enough.

On the flipside, most of the smaller digitally focussed agencies are unable to deliver the boring but essential bits of a project like programme, risk and change management where large consultancies excel.

Hell, most of the smaller agencies I interact with have not idea about practical architectural design, how to actually deploy and manage devops, how to manage risk, how to deliver in a boring but predictable way.

It's kind of a mess and unlikely to get better in the short term. This is the main reason Salesforce took off.

If there are any Django consultancies out there - you could really clean up ...