Back in the days before the steam engine, everybody had a clear understanding of customer service, cost efficiency and productivity. They were mostly self employed as farmers, builders, blacksmiths, tailors and cobblers etc.
During the Industrial Revolution, we took all these capable people, put them in factories, and told them to make the machines go around. Nobody knew, but this was the birth of what we now call the software industry. Factory owners wanted to guarantee profit from their investment, so they employed managers in command and control hierachies. They implemented “systems” to measure and report performance. Through time these “systems” have been embedded in software, and packaged in control functions such as Accounting, ERP, Project Management and the dreaded CRM.
Here’s the conspiracy theory – Corporate Managers and Software Vendors conspire to control what the rest of us do, and keep themselves in high pay, low value add jobs in the process. This isn’t just me on a hobby horse here. In “Blue Ocean Strategy” Kim and Mauborgne attribute SAP‘s success to its’ strategy of persuading corporate buyers that users shouldn’t be allowed to choose software – they don’t know what they need.
Like all conspiracies, this one is doomed to fail, for two reasons.
First – we’re seeing corporate organizations disintegrate, with more and more people leaving to do their own thing, or not joining in the first place.
Leading the way are the “baby boomers”. They aren’t leaving the companies through choice, mostly. They’re being thrown out to make room for the next generation of ladder climbers. But they need, and want, to work so they’re starting their own businesses, and often selling their services back to former employers as consultants.
Closely following are the “Moms” who’ve stayed home to bring up families and now want to work. They just don’t want the inflexibility of corporate life, so they’re setting up their own businesses, based on skills developed during past employment.
The third group is “don’t commute, compute” group. These Gen Yers leave school and go straight to self employment. They exploit their technology skills and experience gained in social networking to create entirely new business propositions.
All of these people are now outside of corporate management structures and are never going to use the standard “command and control” software produced by the industry.
Second – virtually all of the advances in software nowadays are made outside of traditional software companies. Vendors like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft are too busy trying to turn back the tide to take on Google, Yahoo, Facebook, You Tube, Technorati, and a thousand more. They’re too busy trying to protect their bloated cost structures and ecosystems. These “battleships” can’t turn to compete with non-software businesses who use software to offer outstanding value, in new services.
As these two phenomena converge, more people are using the new services to do things their own way, and fewer are using software to do things the management’s way. Software vendor products just don’t work for them.
As individual, or groups of, entrepreneurs, they don’t want to be controlled, and certainly won’t be commanded. Just like the entrepreneurs before the steam engine, they’re capable, productive and flexible. They combine these traits in outstanding customer service and value. Traditional software won’t help them do that. It just gets in the way. Systems that collect, consolidate and report information are no use to small businesses.
What they want is systems that “enable” them – tools to organize, plan, schedule, collaborate and share. They want systems that are flexible, to let the competitive advantage shine through. They want systems that are intuitive, so there’s no need to lose time “training”. They want good business practice “built in” as value add. They want to do complex things, but simply, so they can focus on customer service. Most of all they want this for free, or close to it.
It sounds as if they’re asking for a lot, and of course they are, with good reason. They’re being educated by the market in the art of the possible. What could be more “complexity made simple” than Google Search? What could be more intuitive than Facebook? What could be more collaborative than Wikipedia? What could be more flexible than Twitter? What could be more free than Yahoo Mail?
Front Office Box addresses the needs of these new entrepreneurs. It’s designed NOT to be like traditional software products. It doesn’t have un-necessary features that get in the way. It’s easy to use, because we thought about how people would use it, and built that in. It’s “something for everybody” software as a service, because that’s the way we achieve outstanding value add.
Most of all it’s different because, almost uniquely in terms of business software, it’s used every day by the people who build it.
Software vendors – your days are numbered – please take Accounting, ERP, SCM, CRM and all the other garbage software with you.
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