Watch Your Language
The language of your business is a concrete and important characteristic to consider when using any software system. Small differences between the terminology on the screen and the words that employees use to communicate with one another across an organization can have significant impact on the effectiveness of the system and the people who use it.
Remember that business software is a communications tool. It sends messages to its users – instructing them how to use the thing, why it’s relevant to their work, and how their successful operation of the tool will contribute to their success and the success of the organization. It will be the professionals’ daily or even minute-by-minute reminder of how something is to be done. It will alert them to certain situations and lead them to appropriate responses. It will tell them where to find things and remind them of their employer’s priorities and goals.
A look at the language within a business system can be very revealing. The nouns and verbs that are displayed on the screen may pose unnecessary challenges. Compare the word choices within the displays to the nouns and verbs that are most commonly used in your business and among your workforce—the words used in conversation and interoffice emails. Just look, listen, and compare.
Check the names assigned to files within your system. Reports, spreadsheets, and names of documents managed within many enterprise systems are so difficult to remember or even to recognize that the names themselves are barriers to efficient and effective user access. This very obvious issue is often overlooked because of an assumption that “This is just how the system works.” This may indeed be the case, but recognize it as an issue and investigate its remedy. Engineers may have defined a naming convention that was logical to them, simply because there was no other recommendation, and it may be a stumbling block that can be inexpensively removed. In other cases this may be a difficult issue but one that’s well worth the effort to resolve.
Many business systems provide allowances for configuration of on-screen language during the installation process. Unfortunately, no one is usually present in these efforts who is qualified or willing to add that task to an already complex project. This is why an “out-of-the-box” vocabulary is present in so many systems, and it explains why the words displayed on the user interface of your system may contain unfamiliar terminology. Check the configuration options for your system’s displays – there may be considerable latitude for alternatives to system defaults.
—Excerpted from Wrench in the System: What’s sabotaging your business software and how you can release the power to innovate by Harold Hambrose (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York). Order your copy of this book.
