Trying to capture the future of the software?

Enterprise Tech - The Excel Paradox

Enterprise software is peaking.

The pace of technological innovation is slowing. Everyone is simply following everyone else, rather than building something of their own. It’s not necessarily bad, but the incentive to build something different is not there and not valued as much. Enterprise SaaS vendors are competing over the number of features, leaving little time to rebuild or rethink existing solutions.

All SaaS vendors are trying to sell the same thing: some version of an Excel replacement for a workflow, additionally loaded with collaboration features, and a UI that’s overflowing with modals, forms, and animations.

Users have too many interfaces to switch between and too many UX designs to adopt. Every vendor copies in their own style and design guide, using their own vocabulary. Software adoption has become a new challenge faced by SaaS vendors.

Excel started with data management, and its UX was keyboard-driven and consistent.

Innovating beyond Excel is the best bet for the software industry, but it’s not happening fast enough. Ref: Abstraction

Consumer Tech: Tools that lower the entry barrier

Consumer technology is all about providing easier tools for users to build and share content. Audio and video have become incredibly popular due to their ability to:

• Provide 24/7 entertainment
  • When alone, people often find themselves endlessly scrolling through content
• Convey information quickly and effectively
  • A picture is worth a thousand words, making visual content highly engaging
  • Engaging in activities together is always more enjoyable, and consumer tech enables this
  • Visual content allows for faster information transfer compared to text alone

The value in consumer tech lies in:

1. Creating and showcasing content, allowing users to express themselves
2. Facilitating:
   • Social status and recognition
   • Hobbies and distractions
   • Easily remixing the content, such as creating collages, editing videos, making GIFs, and reacting with emojis, which lowers the barrier to creativity

In the consumer tech space, creativity is rewarded with attention and, subsequently, money. The passion economy has a long way to go.

Enterprise to Consumer interaction: Calendar Sync

It’s all about the CALENDAR sync, or say TIME sync. If I have a business premise to visit, except for the malls, I have to sync the time. Ideas that can be built -

• a social network over calendar
  • Facilitates appointment - with dr, barber, specialists
  • Facilitates direct marketing and direct interactions
  • More personable and private

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(rough: Enterprise software sucks. Bad UI/UX, valuing ROI over creativity Enterprise lacks in building great tools for the consumers consumers expect apple like experience on every platform, things working, but companies are usually not able to provide that, since the most creative team is sitting elsewhere, and you are always chasing)

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The Evolution of Software: From Outlier Interest to Thought-Provoking Tool

Software, like all great things, started with outliers who were interested in exploring its possibilities.

As time passed, businesses began to recognize its potential and started adopting it.

Now, software is finally reaching a phase where it’s truly becoming a tool of thought.

In the future, software could become the tool of the rebellious and the artists, empowering them to push boundaries and create in ways never before imagined.

I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

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Thoughts on Software

• There are fundamentally two types of software:
  1. Standalone software, used by one person to create information
  2. Networked software, used to distribute information and collaborate The primary force driving each of these classes of software forward will differ.

• Products should be configurable by the end-user, not just in how they feel but also in how they work. Think of it as building with Lego blocks.

• There is not enough experimentation with products, primarily because A/B testing is still difficult and relies on tech teams to code and deliver. The process of thinking of a solution, building it, and changing it is complex, costly, and time-consuming. This time to deliver and gather feedback could be shortened by component-based architecture and micro frontends.

Q: How can marketing teams build and release a product for customers to test and provide feedback?

• Software should be more intelligent in understanding user mistakes, self-correcting them, or guessing the user’s intent and proceeding only with the correct input/information.
• Showing errors to the user is a poor user experience.
• A new set of frameworks is needed that would have built-in analytics for the product and features.
• This would also help developers understand and deliver improved software with every release.

Q: Is there a way to create an auto-pilot for software, where the computer does most of the tasks and suggests appropriate actions?

• To deliver intelligence, software needs to become even more vertical.
• This could involve a shift from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Feature as a Service (FaaS), where users can drag and drop features they find useful and build their own version of the software to suit their specific needs.