I’m going to be blunt. Some of the best companies in the world use genuinely terrible software. It can be slow, complicated, have limited abilities, hide critical information, be boring to look at, or all of the above. All of those problems take a toll on employee morale and productivity. These are key factors that data shows to have a significant effect on overall company success.
Gallup estimates that disengaged or unhappy employees cost the U.S. economy $450 to $550 billion every year in lost productivity. Yes, that is billion with a ‘b’, meaning there are millions of employees who go to work every day and are ineffective or unmotivated. While business software is not the only cause of those problems, it is a known contributor.
Bad software can make simple tasks tedious and frustrating. Simple things like finding important documents, communicating with colleagues and finding out when company events are happening can require navigating through a labyrinth of boxes and windows and forms in the company’s software.
So why is company software built so poorly? According to Sean Nolan, a thought leader in modernizing business software and the CEO of Blink, it is the fact that software developers aren’t keeping users in mind from the beginning.
