So the consumer/enterprise debate this weekend brought out many who think the way to fix enterprise software is to put a nice UI/social front end to it. There are lots of things wrong with enterprise software as readers of my blog know and SAP, Oracle and other vendors constantly do battle with me around but to me that is the least of our problems.
We are going through a phase similar to 91-93. Back then people felt sorry for themselves for having to deal with green screens, when they wanted point and click. Today they question their manhood if their UI is not Ajax, Adobe Flash, Facebook enabled. Woe is me. Enterprise software vendors and CIOs just don't get it. How callous of them to let their users suffer.
Let's go back to good business process design principles. Capture data once - at source - in the most optimal digital format. Those 3 building blocks should apply when considering any UI re-design. So, Susan Scrupski has a good example. She is made to manually fill out her health claim forms. Someone at the insurer then probably scans them or manually enters the data. Instead of re-doing that internal system UI, the better solution would be to give users like her a direct interface. She has every incentive to get the data right, and enter it electronically. Even better would be to have her health care provider process the form electronically to the insurance company when she got the service. That would be capturing data once at the source and time of the trigger event.
I shake my head when I drop off my dry cleaning every week. The employees ask me my phone number and name every time and write it on a ticket in duplicate. Sometime during the day someone enters the ticket into a tracking system. Miraculously few clothes get lost in the 4 stores the owner has. Especially with a last name like mine. I have told him many times why not give me a customer card with a bar code on it and have his employees just scan it when I bring my clothes. That would be the most optimal data capture. Actually the most efficient would be to allow me to print a ticket at home or have a self-service kiosk at the store. I, more than any employee, have the incentive to get the ticket information right.
What's my point in all this? Someone in IT at Susan's insurer is probably working on a better UI for the clerk who enters her claim information. That is their solution to making that enterprise system "better". Somewhere at the software vendor which my dry cleaner uses, someone is working on a better user interface for his employees. Waste of money.
If we are going to re-do UI, let's not sex up the look and feel. Let's fix the business process it is part of. And that may mean destroying in many cases the UI for the non-value added intermediaries in the process...I know totally un-sexy...
