What makes simple in IT? Marketing versus real technology.
At the ending
of 2014, I wrote a blog about the buzzword of that year being ‘disruptive’. Of
course I am tempted now to wait until the end of December with publishing this
blog, but why wait. It is already very clear to me what the buzzword for this
year is in ‘my’ world of IT and cloud applications: ‘simple’.
Wherever
you click, swipe or scroll, the word ‘simple’ seems to be added to everything
the software market is producing at the moment (and yes, my software firm does
the same, guilty as charged!). To my opinion though, there is usually one important
part missing in the marketing. No one seems to really define what ‘simple’ is…
Honestly,
so far I have seen only one firm doing a nice attempt at framing the buzz a
little more than just buzzing along, being SAP in their statement of investing heavily
in “consumer simple, while maintaining their business strong”. This statement
kind of relates to impulses in my head that visualise a targeted definition of
simple, being the way we do things at home on our sofa holding only a tablet
pc.
Beyond that I only find examples that:
1. say
nothing at all, like “simple is aiming for user-centric”, which is to me
nothing more than just replacing one buzzword with another;
2. are
smart but hollow, like “we do things simpler”, sounds valid because it can
always be more simple than today but actually is just consulting marketing, not
a real brand promise; or even
3. are full-fledged
lame, like naming a firm ‘simple blahblah’
and not even bother with an explanation or frame at all…
But then
what? Because I am a little torn. Being a software entrepreneur (see my firm
AGAIN by LAKRAN), I can highly appreciate the marketing value of a ‘simple’
promise, but as a services entrepreneur (see my firm LAKRAN ProcurementProfessionals) I greatly value the marketing effect of keeping your promises.
Communicating a promise without a proper explanation is too easy to keep, or
not possible to keep at all, so as an entrepreneur I think much value is wasted
in the greater software market because of the lack of a clear vision on what is
simple.
Considering
all this, I just thought to start an attempt at focussing on some sort of
definition to ‘simple’ in business software. Please feel free to react to this,
might make a nice discussion.
A
definition of the word simple can be found in a dictionary like ‘easy to
understand or do’. But that automatically brings me to the core: what does one
find easy. In checking synonyms I come a little further. Words are mentioned
like ‘intelligible’, ‘understandable’, ‘unmistakable’, ‘lucid’. Checking
definitions on those synonyms gives me a useful trail: “capable of being
understood”.
When I take
that last meaning and reflect that as a meaning in IT, I come to the
understanding that ‘simplifying’ is “optimizing a software’s capabilities of
being understood”. The question that remains left then is what makes a software
better understood? A question that I honestly do not expect to be answering in
the next few lines of text, because that is where technology finally gets the upper
hand of marketing. What is actually possible? How is a software developer able
to grasp that technology and make it work? How does a user relate to software?
Who or what makes a user? How does a user think? Or is there more to
understanding software than aiming at the users that handle it?
For now I
would like to keep an open mind, and thus aim for more than just users. To me (being
active in interorganisational software such as Suppliers and Buyers
collaborating on one platform), understanding software should also be a ground
rule for organisations, but also for the software that integrates to it, for
the stakeholders that need to decide on it, for ...
And how do
you make sure that a complex construct of stakeholders and technology is able
to understand one piece of software? Simple (and yes, humor attempted in using
this word;-)), by making sure the gap between “what they do and understand now”
and “what they are supposed to do and understand with the new software” is as
small as possible!
So to
support a wide angle to ‘simple’ in business software, from here on I think
that a proper definition (or so you want ‘goal’ to simple) should be to “maximize output, while asking as
minimal compromise/change as possible from all involved”.
Curious to your thoughts...
Doede van Haperen
www.again.nl
www.lakran.com
www.ehiring.nl
