
Removing the Dread from Internal Enterprise Systems - Heffay626
https://thetechladder.com/story/removing-dread-internal-enterprise-systems/
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nunez
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.

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atrakh
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.

~~~
justinucd
Ya revenue and ROI are typically the drivers that determine how budget and
resources are allocated. If something is not seen as necessarily critical or
customer-facing, then it can just be kept behind the scenes.

Then.. of course.. you face the issue of turnover and attrition. People leave
and rarely do things transition smoothly from employee generation to
generation.

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flarg
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
...

