Boring software for boring companies.

The reality when it comes to choosing technology is people go with what they know. This is because in order to imagine a new way of doing things you need to have an intimate knowledge of how it's currently being done, how it could be done, and all of the technology available.

What I consistently see is that we get obsessed with the features and capabilities of the service provider and just don't think about the needs of the users and what type of technology the users need to be able to do their jobs. We don't think about how a boring product demonstration that takes two-and-a-half hours and slightly confuses us as a team and decision-makers will translate into confusion and hours of boring training for the users.

I see such a contrast between the obsession with organisational design in software and service businesses and the way that technology is being chosen to enhance the productivity of these super valuable knowledge workers and the approach to technology that's being taken in e-commerce brands.

It's like everyone in an ecommerce business is just a cog in a wheel to push sales orders into being a shipment into a shipping label. These highly creative, highly visual, and highly valuable people ultimately determine the success or failure of your business. Why is everything being drawn back to the core operational transactions?

A purchase order is the end result of a complex process that involves a design that appears from nowhere someone imagines what a certain style could look like that then gets sampled it goes to a supplier and the price of it change based on the material changing then it goes into a costing sheet with calculating margin with doing so much work to get that product to the point of purchase orders. But the priority in most businesses seems to be about bringing Law and Order and managing the checks and balances and very little time is being spent figuring out how to create an amazing process to get there.

The actual process to get there has far more impact on the business than having a PO.

There has to be a point where you look at why are we rolling out software in 2022 that your users describe as looking like Windows 98 and requiring them to click on 50 different buttons to move between screens just because that's the system that XYZ put in at that big brand that everybody wants to look like and everyone wants to be like.

Well, guess what you're not going to be like them or grow like they have by following the processes and practices that they put in place to control and throttle their processes because they scaled up too fast and their priority was slowing things down and getting under control to prevent mistakes.