Intuitive ERP Software Survey 2011

Marieke — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:28:30 +0000

ERP systems can hamper productivity and business agility, global IFS study says

A global study carried out by IDC on behalf of IFS reveals that less than a third of companies find their enterprise applications intuitive and easy to use. The study examined the importance of usability and flexibility in enterprise applications among companies in the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavia and India.

Today’s global business world is more complex and interconnected than ever, constantly posing new challenges on productivity and business agility. There is therefore a growing demand among companies for enterprise applications that are intuitive and easy to use. The survey clearly shows that ERP providers must improve their software in order to meet these demands.

“The study proves what we at IFS have known for many years: usability and agility are vital for companies in terms of productivity. IFS will therefore continue to focus on usability and user experience as these will be areas of key importance going forward,” IFS CTO Dan Matthews said.

The survey, based on interviews with C-level respondents in seven different industries, verified that usability and flexibility are important considerations when evaluating enterprise application software. The most notable findings were:

-Less than one third (29%) find their enterprise applications intuitive and easy to use
- More than half (60%) consider some tasks a waste of time when using the enterprise applications
- Almost half (45%) expect noteworthy business changes to take place within the coming 12-24 months and 82% of these respondents believe their business applications need modification to support these changes
- 44% believe their enterprise applications have a negative impact on business agility

Anders Elbak, Research Manager at IDC, commented, “The research clearly proves that while being essential for running a company, enterprise applications are likely to hamper productivity through unintuitive user interfaces, poor integrations, difficult navigation and insufficient search functionality.”

Even though a large majority of companies (60%) considered usability when purchasing a new system – 24% of respondents even held it as the most important consideration – less than one third (29%) of all respondents were running intuitive and user-friendly enterprise applications – compared with the 2008 IFS study on the same topic, in which 64% of companies reported usability as an important aspect and 42% regarded their systems as easy to use. This suggests that expectations about how intuitive and user-friendly ERP systems should be have been raised in line with the general trend of ‘consumerisation’ of software applications and smartphones – a development that will prioritise usability as a consideration for companies evaluating new systems and as a design factor for software companies.

> Download the survey here

Necessary but not sufficient

Martijn Lofvers — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:47:04 +0000

A great deal has been published about Baan Company, in many different media. The best-known book is the one by Mark Houben and Jeroen Wester of the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad, which gives an illuminating overview of the issues with Baan. ‘Baan – Opkomst en Ondergang van een Software Bedrijf’ (Baan– Rise and Fall of a Software Company) describes in chronological order and in very understandable terms the incomprehensible practices of this company. The authors mention the failed attempt at a coup by Jan Baan, which he had planned in October 1998 together with logistics guru Eliyahu Goldratt, to try and save the company. This explains that Goldratt’s novel ‘Necessary but not sufficient’ is actually about the way Baan Company might have developed, had the coup been successful.

Goldratt’s novel Necessary but not sufficient

The protagonist of this book is Scott Duncan, CEO of the ERP supplier BGSoft. Every quarter, his listed company has to give forecasts of percentile growth in the double digits. In November 1998, Scott notices that one of their competitors is hit by negative financial growth and is forced to fire six hundred people. Is the entire ERP industry grinding to a commercial halt? The way out for BGSoft is selling value: BGSoft customers are not required to pay until the pre-calculated savings targets are met.

Two years ago the Dutch film ‘De Uitverkorene’ (the chosen one) came out, a fiction film that was clearly inspired on the lives of the brothers Jan and Paul Baan. This powerful film shows how all kinds of conflicts of interest can suddenly arise when people’s work, faith and private lives become too closely intertwined. The company in the film will surely go down, just as Baan Company did in 1998. Dutch actor Pierre Bokma won an International Emmy Award for his performance as one of the two brothers.

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Intuitive ERP Software Survey 2011

Necessary but not sufficient