
Ask HN: Why is Enterprise software UX so bad compared to Consumer Software? - cgb223
In my experience working for various companies, I’ve found the the software we’re required to use for various tasks always has clunky, inefficient, and sometimes just bizarre UX.<p>How did software that is so hard to use become so prolific in the B2B space?
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segmondy
It's not. It's great. Most people forget that UX is like a language. You can't
go about changing a language that people are accustomed to. It's a very
expensive thing. Enterprise users pay a lot and are use to it. Changing the
UX/UI means retraining tons of people, breaking integration that other
businesses have built on their system. Most companies don't provide API, so
businesses build on UI. What do you think happens when Amazon or Google or
Facebook changes their UI? lots of businesses that screenscrape break. Now
these customer are usually not paying, but imagine that they were paying. You
now have a swarm of angry paying customers. I work in enterprise. There are
lots of integration we have with other companies UI/UX. Over http, over
terminal/mainframe. If anything changes, impact is millions. Of course to our
shock and utter horror. NOT! Other businesses have built logic on our UI/UX.
If we change some things, their integration breaks, hundreds of thousands or
possibly millions of dollars at stake too. You see clunky, I see money, I see
happy users, I see users familiar with the way it is and no retraining needed
for 10,000 users.

~~~
Solstinox
Doesn't explain why the UX is bad. There are great user experiences from 40+
years ago that hold up.

~~~
segmondy
Additions are added without breaking previous UX even when a better flow is
possible. Imagine you have F and it's natural to go from E->F but it's also
very nice to go from A->E->F, well if you already built a path from
A->B->C->D->E, with Enterprise, they will have A->B->C-D->E->F, where modern
consumer software will just change it from A->E->F and maybe move B to the
main menu.

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AdmiralAsshat
Having worked on Enterprise software, the guys that are paying for X feature
to be added usually have no UX sense themselves and, unless we are explicitly
given the freedom to put it in as we see fit, we're left to the customer to
tell us where it goes.

Customer: I want this new button right there.

Developer: This menu is already quite cluttered with other features we've put
here. Could we not add it to a new menu?

Customer: No, I spend like 95% of my day in this menu, so I want it right
here.

Developer: This might be confusing to some of our other customers, though.

Customer: Yeah well they're not paying for it. Do you want my money or not?

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Solstinox
The people who design/build consumer software often eat their own cooking.
Feedback cycles are rapid and short.

The people who design/build enterprise software rarely eat their own cooking.
Feedback cycles are infrequent and long or non-existent.

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wmf
Good UX costs money and there's no incentive to improve it since the people
who buy it don't use it.

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markus_zhang
Because whoever makes decisions on purchase usually don't use them.

~~~
abosley
This exactly the problem. Similar to the third-party payer anti-pattern in
healthcare.

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rogerkirkness
In consumer, the customer are typically advertisers and the users are
typically the product. Facebook ad products are just as strangely designed,
complex and such, because no one approving Facebook Ad spend in a big deal is
the one using it. So the same company can actually end up with both, a
"product" that serves decision makers in ad agencies, and a "product" that
retains consumer eyeballs.

When you say clunky, inefficient and bizarre UX, you mean the user UX, which
doesn't matter in enterprise. If it didn't save a VP or better yet the CEO of
a large company mad time, make them more money, save them money or mitigate
risk, it would not be there in the first place. Because systems like SAP are
incredibly good at both doing that in complex use cases and making the case
for it, they prevail.

Startups often try to go enterprise and say their UX is better. Notion may be
great, but based on pricing it's creating <$10/user/month in enterprise value.
There are products in specialized industries (e.g. Bloomberg in finance) that
charge $2000/user/month. They serve the real customer, which is the VP or CEO
who signs, very well.

~~~
wbl
If you've ever seen someone good at a Bloomberg terminal it is incredible what
they can do. Think of it like vim for finance.

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d4nt
Companies have processes and changing those processes is very difficult and
risky for the managers involved. A new software provider really needs to fit
round the existing processes if it wants to make a sale.

Buying one person, or one team, a tool like Adobe CS doesn’t really change any
processes so it’s easy. But dropping a new system in that changes a process
and everything changes.

“Helen from risk wants a new fraud detection system” is effectively the same
as “Helen wants to review all our fraud detection policies and if anything
changes and subsequently goes wrong it won’t just be Helen that gets fired”.
There’s a huge pressure on the software provider to make their system support
whatever unique, crazy or arcane processes the risk team were previously
using, and support all existing interfaces into and out of the risk team,
because nobody wants to sign off on any changes. So enterprise software has to
be crazy flexible. And flexibility makes for bad UX.

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Jugurtha
> _How did software that is so hard to use become so prolific in the B2B
> space?_

If the software relies on sales people who answer "Yes, absolutely!" to every
question from prospects, you end up in a bad place.

Generally speaking, User != Purchaser. You push to include User in the loop
and development process. Sometimes, you are not allowed, and sometimes the
contract itself is signed contingent on this. It can get carder if you're not
allowed to sollicit users' feedback, _but_ are given carte blanche to develop:
you're developing based on what you think will be right for the user. You will
have hard conversations with the users at the end of the project when they
receive the software and you're allowed to interact and "fix a few things here
and there", at which point you'll try to cram in as much user feedback as
possible to "make it right".

Now, if you're not building for a particular client and you are working on
_your_ product that's targeting the enterprise, there are other distribution
methods where you design for the _user_ who works for an enterprise so there's
a "de facto" adoption, which then can lead to an enterprise software that is
good.

A quick litmus test: if you are on a website and want to use the software, and
there's a button that reads "Schedule Demo", or "Book Appointment with Sales",
or "Contact Sales", chances are the software in question is the kind you don't
like.

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thu2111
Lack of competition. Lack of people who understand or care about UX. For
example, a typical enterprise software company will hire programmers who are
both skilled in programming and have domain experience, i.e. a financial
programmer for a financial industry app. This is because they believe,
probably correctly, that understanding finance is more important for their
developers than understanding how to make beautiful animations play at 60fps.

There's a lot of other problems. "Enterprise" software often comes from
companies that aren't actually software companies, in the sense that they
aren't run by the guy who wrote the first version of the product. They're run
by non-tech people who hired some developers to build their idea. These people
typically create large and bloated product and project management
organisations that try to convert programmers into replaceable cog wheels that
convert JIRA tickets into code commits. They often dream of out-sourcing their
devs entirely and would love to do nothing but sit in the middle collecting
fees without needing to write software. They certainly cannot judge the
quality of the work produced, even by looking at the user interface. Maybe
they have some vague feeling it could be better but they aren't going to dive
into the detail and figure out why or how.

Developers know this and have minimal loyalty to the product or organisation,
so whatever work is done is always minimal effort work. If the ticket can be
marked as done they move onto the next one.

Successful consumer facing software firms are often quite different. They're
run by someone who uses their own product, at least sometimes, and who
probably made the first version so they care about the details and know what's
possible. They hire developers who are NOT domain experts, on the assumption
that if you need expert knowledge to use the app you're not making consumer
software, so they hire people who have a proven track record of creating
beautiful and easy to use UI. What the UI exactly does is not so important.
They tend to trust developers more, in my experience, because they know a
small performance or UI edge can be sufficient to differentiate them in the
market.

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eruleman
Primary agent problem. The people who purchase Enterprise software
(accounting, IT) aren't the same people who use the software, therefore they
don't care about things like UX when making purchasing decisions.

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stocknoob
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

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ID1452319
In my opinion, the reason is that Amazon, Facebook et al know their users will
not receive training or persevere with poor UX or an unintuitive UI.
Therefore, they have to design good software in order to be competitive.

On the other hand enterprise software implementations always include a
business change element which involves lots of communication and training,
especially for key users. Therefore there is less obligation for vendors to
build intuitive solutions.

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achairapart
One reason could be that consumer software is somehow forced to have a good UX
because they need more users. More users more profit.

Enterprise users are already all there. Once a solution is choosen users are
forced to use the software as is, no matter how bad or good it is. There is
just no more incentives to make it better for corporate users. Think SAP, it
make me think of this every time I see it.

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duxup
I wonder how much enterprise is driven by the customer and customers are often
terrible at considering the impact of requests.

If they will pay for button or feature right there... often there it goes.

If they like the layout or design of something they're familiar with...there
it is.

