[Sigia-l] Forcing practice

[prai at prady.com]

"Todd R.Warfel" comment -

>> Peter cryptically says this makes good business sense [...]
>
> Someone needs to communicate to the business that good business sense
> is keeping your user by keeping them happy. By ignoring external users,
> you'll lose them. By ignoring internal users, you're throwing money
> down the drain on something they won't adopt. Either way, you increase
> support and training costs and have an unproductive, undesirable
> product.
>
> So, tell me, how is that good business sense?

In enterprise application domains (such as ERPs, Collaboration, Supply
Chain, etc.) User Interface Design precedes the marketting "strategy".
This goes true as far as I2, mySAP and so many other applications are
concerned. You may not find it written on the user guide, but you can see
the applications and tell that it was designed with the fact in mind that
it has to compliment agendas of "corporate Training", "Consultancy",
"Customer Support" as added cost to each sale.

The motivation to follow User Centered approach in these industry scares
the hell out of Managers who drive the strategy to build such products.
Whether you believe it or not, this is my experience that those managers
who are in-charge of building such enterprise applications are scared that
overtly simple product may take away the return business.

Pradyot Rai