Before You Buy Enterprise Software, Do the Job

Right now is enterprise software buying season, in which well-intentioned people who have never done the job make purchasing decisions for employees who do.

These folks are usually on a committee, typically composed of executives, IT, finance and sometimes security. If there’s an end user on the committee (unusual), they’re typically at the manager level.

None of these people spend their days completing the tasks that hundreds of their employees do every day. So when the vendor shows up to do their demo and showcases the happy path, they don’t know where to push or how to judge what they’re seeing.

Fast forward two years and now the meeting is about why their employees are cranky and unproductive, not to mention leaving for other companies.

When people navigate an ugly grey maze of boxes all day every day, they start dreaming about working for the sexy startup down the street.

But that sexy startup isn’t supporting thousands of employees in multiple geographic locations, didn’t have a data breach a few years ago that necessitated everyone having to log in via VPN, and doesn’t need to be profitable right now because they’re “scaling”.

The accountant, the security officer and the guy from compliance are on the purchasing committee for a reason.

As much as I would love to believe that user experience trumps all other considerations, it doesn’t, which is why I spend just as much time on security and the invisible architecture of my software as I do on design.

However, I strongly believe that good design cannot and should not be sacrificed. I’m inspired by companies that have become popular in the enterprise while maintaining superb UX, like Slack, Figma and Notion. These are products that achieved bottom-up adoption: they weren’t chosen by committee, they were chosen by end-users first, and that preference bubbled up to leadership.

That doesn’t work for all types of software: end-users don’t just start using an ERP they found online. Enterprises, and the committees of leaders that run them, do need to make top-down decisions. How can they do that in a way that doesn’t lead to employee dissatisfaction and gummed-up operations?

It goes back to what I wrote at the start: they need to do the job. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, worked undercover as an Uber driver and Uber Eats courier, going by “Dave K.”, and discovered genuine issues with how drivers were treated in the app.

DoorDash has a standing policy where everyone, including executives, does deliveries regularly. Herb Kelleher at Southwest was known for working alongside frontline staff, even loading luggage on planes.

The lesson for people on purchasing committees is simple: do the job, even just for a couple of hours. Hands-on experience - and the empathy it brings - fuel better decisions.

In the case of Tediware, trying out the product – and doing the job – is simple by design. If your staff spend hours on mapping, you should try the mapping demo. Interested in seeing what a beautifully designed, securely architected EDI platform looks like? You can sign up free and try it.