Your Next System
In an ideal world, any business system deployed within an organization would be required to meet certain measurements of user performance. Unfortunately, most licensing agreements guarantee only the technical fidelity of the software, not the ultimate success of the product in the hands of its users.
Ask your vendors whether they have data about user adoption and acceptance of their systems. Can they provide metrics? Can they arrange for you to speak with one of their clients who is using the system? Better yet, can you speak with a few people who actually use the system on a daily basis?
Explore the possibility of defining human performance criteria within your next software contract. This might include specifying employee positions of a certain title or management level, the tasks that those employees will perform, and the time frame in which your company can expect them to be proficient in operating the system. Would it be too much for the supplier of an enterprise system to guarantee that your managers will be able to use it to generate reports—by themselves?
The time required to perform a specific task can be easily measured and averaged across a user population within just a few days. For example, by testing a dozen workers, the time it currently takes to locate certain information within a corporate intranet can be quantified. If the intranet you are considering deploying will be doing little more than serving up thousands of pages of information to your employees, might the supplier of that system be willing to guarantee that the average time for your 50,000 employees to find information about your company’s policy on Family Leave will be no more than 90 seconds?
Even if vendors won’t provide data about usability or offer a guarantee that includes user adoption figures, the way they respond to questions about these issues can tell you a great deal.
— 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.
