7 ms·

>There are psychological phenomena in play that make an existing, market dominant piece of software more successful and harder to displace when it's objectively

by Dwolb 9y ago

>There are psychological phenomena in play that make an existing, market dominant piece of software more successful and harder to displace when it's objectively harder to use when that software forms the basis for someone's job. For the record and from the GP's context, I'm going to assume by 'harder' you mean 'difficult to use UI'. I'd assert 'difficult to use UI' is the incorrect type of 'hardness' or 'difficulty' that should be present in an enterprise piece of software. Mainly because fighting a UI is non-value add to the goal of the user. The user's goal, in this case is to manage their books. Because of this tension of QB _purposefully_ being at odds with the user goal, I'd expect start-ups and new software products to gobble up QB market share over time. If this is the case, all QB can do is make it more difficult for current users to switch off them (.QBW file extension?) as their market share slowly dwindles and their channel sellers slowly disappear. Good 'difficulty' should come from the learning curve it takes to master (i.e. accurately, quickly, and reliably) the task at hand. FWIW I'd expect purposefully building difficult-to-use products has many negative externalities for the company culture and this would be a big red flag for any future Intuiters.

curun1r 9y ago
You're still not getting it. A Bookkeeper's goal isn't to keep the books. That's their product, but they have their own small business that has more fundamental goals. Accounting software that's easy to use makes it easier to keep the books, but it runs counter to that more fundamental goal of running a successful small business. You're right that there are negative externalities. Small business accounting costs more than it needs to and, by extension, small businesses need to charge customers a bit more. But the people deciding which accounting software to use are the ones benefiting from that negative externality, not the ones paying for it. And as a software vendor, you always target decision makers over users or you go out of business.
- davemel37 9y ago
  I don't think anyone is misunderstanding your point, I just think its ridiculously backwards. It's the equivalent of the government breaking roads so they can create jobs fixing those roads. If software can simplify bookkeeping and make the profession obsolete, and you deliberately make your software in a way that keeps that inefficiency at play...you guys are gonna wake up one day and realize you spent all your time serving the bloated middleware instead of the true end user, and your market will evaporate before you know what happened.... We get that from a short term perspective, it may make sense to keep it too complicated for the end users, but efficient markets will prevail short of forced intervention. If that is how Intuit thinks, I cannot wait for the day when they get displaced.
  - curun1r 9y ago
    Yes, it's ridiculously backwards. But it's reality. Intuit, at various times, has tried to make the kinds of changes you guys are suggesting. And every time they've run smack into reality and had to backpedal. Reality is like that...you can try to deny, and fail, or accept it and adjust your thinking. It isn't a how Intuit thinks issue, it's the way their customers think after decades of getting comfortable using Intuit software. Another example...Intuit has wanted to transition customers away from the desktop version of Quickbooks for many years now. If you think Quickbooks online has it's learning curve, just spend some time using the desktop product. It's a maze that takes years to learn to navigate and many of the "features" are horribly buggy from years of neglect. But pry it from their cold, dead hands Intuit cannot, so you can still buy new versions of Quickbooks Desktop. That's why what you guys are saying is so ridiculous. You're denying a reality in a field you're not familiar with. You're saying something should be different because it's inefficient or other industries work differently. But you haven't done the user research. You don't have decades of experience dealing with the people who actually spend money on the software. You're in no position to critique the way that Intuit thinks.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I don't think I like anything you are saying but it would be hard to deny that this is pretty interesting insight.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Believe their larger point is that these types of companies get disrupted eventually.
    - davemel37 9y ago
      > And every time they've run smack into reality and had to backpedal. I am all for being brutally aware of reality...but, there is also a time horizon to these things. Most great startups had to break through resistance. Maybe the resistance you guys saw was simply resistance to change... Maybe tweaks to UI isn't what wins this game...maybe its tools like Pilot or services like bench, or maybe its something like the car solving the horse manure problems of the turn of the century... And to be fair, there are some studies that show cognitive strain being linked to better focus or something like that (Disclaimer: I have no idea what im talking about, but am pretty sure Thinking Fast and Slow discusses it.) so, maybe a harder UI is better... What I do know is that I want software to make my life easier and more efficient. And I don't mind if that takes away part of a means of my livelihood, I'll figure out the next step the same way I got to where I am today. If I understood you correctly, the folks in charge of this are very good at their jobs and I am sure they are optimizing for their quarterly earnings, or bonuses, or whatever else they are incentivized to do...and I get the idea that they see bookkeepers as their customers, not business owners, and are serving them as best they know how... but this feels like the lazy way out of innovating.
- odorousrex 9y ago
  So Hypothetical then: 1) Using QuickBooks I can keep 1 clients books in an hour. I charge the client $100/hr 2) Using a Competitors software I can shave 10 minutes off that. Assuming I work an 8 hour day, I'd be making $120 more a day if I switched off Quickbooks, minus the time it would take me to learn new software. Small business fundamental goals indeed.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    Unless the labor pool of bookkeepers expands by 30% (increased usability) and prices fall by 30% or more due to increased competition.
  - curun1r 9y ago
    Quickbooks isn't slow to use, it's unintuitive. That's a crucial difference to your calculation. An experienced Quickbooks user can still work very quickly by internalizing the wonkiness. The inefficiency is suffered by novice users.
  - cosmie 9y ago
    In isolation that sounds fantastic. When looking at the greater market dynamics, it's not at roses. Professionals tend to form opinions in the interest of their self preservation, whether consciously or otherwise. By shaving off the time it takes to keep the books, a percentage of clients will decide that the time it takes to keep the books isn't worth outsourcing. The shorter you make the time commitment, the more the cost/benefit analysis leans that way. You've also made it easier for other bookkeepers. Now they have more room in their day for more clients, plus the barrier of entry for new bookkeepers is powered by the easier software. All of a sudden you have negative pricing pressure driving your rates down and next thing you know your client base has gone up but your rates have gone down and you're making the same amount of money but with more client management overhead due to additional clients being serviced. Then at some point, the ease of use shrinks to the point where a critical mass of the client base have decided to do it themselves, and you start finding it hard to source enough clients to fill all 8 hours a day, and have yet more negative pricing pressure to make up for it. What started as making your job more efficient evolved into making your job so efficient you weren't needed.
noelwelsh 9y ago
Agreed. In the UK the SMB accounting market is owned by Freeagent and Xero, which are both really easy to use. We used QB for a short period of time. It was a terrible piece of software and we couldn't dump it fast enough. They are still entrenched in the US but I wouldn't expect their so-called competitive advantage of "hard to use" to last.

by Dwolb 9y ago

curun1r 9y ago

You're still not getting it. A Bookkeeper's goal isn't to keep the books. That's their product, but they have their own small business that has more fundamental goals. Accounting software that's easy to use makes it easier to keep the books, but it runs counter to that more fundamental goal of running a successful small business. You're right that there are negative externalities. Small business accounting costs more than it needs to and, by extension, small businesses need to charge customers a bit more. But the people deciding which accounting software to use are the ones benefiting from that negative externality, not the ones paying for it. And as a software vendor, you always target decision makers over users or you go out of business.

davemel37 9y ago
I don't think anyone is misunderstanding your point, I just think its ridiculously backwards. It's the equivalent of the government breaking roads so they can create jobs fixing those roads. If software can simplify bookkeeping and make the profession obsolete, and you deliberately make your software in a way that keeps that inefficiency at play...you guys are gonna wake up one day and realize you spent all your time serving the bloated middleware instead of the true end user, and your market will evaporate before you know what happened.... We get that from a short term perspective, it may make sense to keep it too complicated for the end users, but efficient markets will prevail short of forced intervention. If that is how Intuit thinks, I cannot wait for the day when they get displaced.
- curun1r 9y ago
  Yes, it's ridiculously backwards. But it's reality. Intuit, at various times, has tried to make the kinds of changes you guys are suggesting. And every time they've run smack into reality and had to backpedal. Reality is like that...you can try to deny, and fail, or accept it and adjust your thinking. It isn't a how Intuit thinks issue, it's the way their customers think after decades of getting comfortable using Intuit software. Another example...Intuit has wanted to transition customers away from the desktop version of Quickbooks for many years now. If you think Quickbooks online has it's learning curve, just spend some time using the desktop product. It's a maze that takes years to learn to navigate and many of the "features" are horribly buggy from years of neglect. But pry it from their cold, dead hands Intuit cannot, so you can still buy new versions of Quickbooks Desktop. That's why what you guys are saying is so ridiculous. You're denying a reality in a field you're not familiar with. You're saying something should be different because it's inefficient or other industries work differently. But you haven't done the user research. You don't have decades of experience dealing with the people who actually spend money on the software. You're in no position to critique the way that Intuit thinks.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I don't think I like anything you are saying but it would be hard to deny that this is pretty interesting insight.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Believe their larger point is that these types of companies get disrupted eventually.
  - davemel37 9y ago
    > And every time they've run smack into reality and had to backpedal. I am all for being brutally aware of reality...but, there is also a time horizon to these things. Most great startups had to break through resistance. Maybe the resistance you guys saw was simply resistance to change... Maybe tweaks to UI isn't what wins this game...maybe its tools like Pilot or services like bench, or maybe its something like the car solving the horse manure problems of the turn of the century... And to be fair, there are some studies that show cognitive strain being linked to better focus or something like that (Disclaimer: I have no idea what im talking about, but am pretty sure Thinking Fast and Slow discusses it.) so, maybe a harder UI is better... What I do know is that I want software to make my life easier and more efficient. And I don't mind if that takes away part of a means of my livelihood, I'll figure out the next step the same way I got to where I am today. If I understood you correctly, the folks in charge of this are very good at their jobs and I am sure they are optimizing for their quarterly earnings, or bonuses, or whatever else they are incentivized to do...and I get the idea that they see bookkeepers as their customers, not business owners, and are serving them as best they know how... but this feels like the lazy way out of innovating.
odorousrex 9y ago
So Hypothetical then: 1) Using QuickBooks I can keep 1 clients books in an hour. I charge the client $100/hr 2) Using a Competitors software I can shave 10 minutes off that. Assuming I work an 8 hour day, I'd be making $120 more a day if I switched off Quickbooks, minus the time it would take me to learn new software. Small business fundamental goals indeed.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Unless the labor pool of bookkeepers expands by 30% (increased usability) and prices fall by 30% or more due to increased competition.
- curun1r 9y ago
  Quickbooks isn't slow to use, it's unintuitive. That's a crucial difference to your calculation. An experienced Quickbooks user can still work very quickly by internalizing the wonkiness. The inefficiency is suffered by novice users.
- cosmie 9y ago
  In isolation that sounds fantastic. When looking at the greater market dynamics, it's not at roses. Professionals tend to form opinions in the interest of their self preservation, whether consciously or otherwise. By shaving off the time it takes to keep the books, a percentage of clients will decide that the time it takes to keep the books isn't worth outsourcing. The shorter you make the time commitment, the more the cost/benefit analysis leans that way. You've also made it easier for other bookkeepers. Now they have more room in their day for more clients, plus the barrier of entry for new bookkeepers is powered by the easier software. All of a sudden you have negative pricing pressure driving your rates down and next thing you know your client base has gone up but your rates have gone down and you're making the same amount of money but with more client management overhead due to additional clients being serviced. Then at some point, the ease of use shrinks to the point where a critical mass of the client base have decided to do it themselves, and you start finding it hard to source enough clients to fill all 8 hours a day, and have yet more negative pricing pressure to make up for it. What started as making your job more efficient evolved into making your job so efficient you weren't needed.

noelwelsh 9y ago

Agreed. In the UK the SMB accounting market is owned by Freeagent and Xero, which are both really easy to use. We used QB for a short period of time. It was a terrible piece of software and we couldn't dump it fast enough. They are still entrenched in the US but I wouldn't expect their so-called competitive advantage of "hard to use" to last.