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>also sometimes customers do love and praise it if they aren't the users This is important and often overlooked. Many times, the customers for some software a

>also sometimes customers do love and praise it if they aren't the users This is important and often overlooked. Many times, the customers for some software are not the same as the users of that software. The customers are the only ones who matter: they're the ones who pay for the software. The users don't matter at all: even if they absolutely loathe the software, so what? They have no power to change things and aren't writing the checks. Screw 'em. If they don't like it, they can find another job. As a result of this, we get "enterprise software".

alkonaut 4y ago
This is true (in most cases I assume), but it's users that make the free marketing, not the managers that pay the bills. They might say "productivity is up", but they don't say "I like using it". If you don't want to spend money marketing software, you probably want both of those kinds of free marketing.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I don't think most enterprise software users actually talk about the crappy software they use outside of work, or to other people in the same industry but at other companies. For instance, at one job I had to use time-keeping software to track my hours, vacation time, etc. Like all employees, I was just a user of that software, but it had nothing to do with my normal job, it was just to track attendance and such. Except for complaining, I never went around to other competing companies to talk to them about their time-keeping software. And my company's upper management sure as heck didn't bother to ask me if I liked the software, or if they should contract with a different vendor. Even if they did, it's not like I had a lot of experience with different, competing products. Plus, being enterprise software, it was heavily customized for that company. The users of this software weren't providing free marketing to anyone. The marketing was probably done with backroom deals over expensive dinners and sports event tickets, I'm guessing.

alkonaut 4y ago

This is true (in most cases I assume), but it's users that make the free marketing, not the managers that pay the bills. They might say "productivity is up", but they don't say "I like using it". If you don't want to spend money marketing software, you probably want both of those kinds of free marketing.

midoridensha 4y ago
I don't think most enterprise software users actually talk about the crappy software they use outside of work, or to other people in the same industry but at other companies. For instance, at one job I had to use time-keeping software to track my hours, vacation time, etc. Like all employees, I was just a user of that software, but it had nothing to do with my normal job, it was just to track attendance and such. Except for complaining, I never went around to other competing companies to talk to them about their time-keeping software. And my company's upper management sure as heck didn't bother to ask me if I liked the software, or if they should contract with a different vendor. Even if they did, it's not like I had a lot of experience with different, competing products. Plus, being enterprise software, it was heavily customized for that company. The users of this software weren't providing free marketing to anyone. The marketing was probably done with backroom deals over expensive dinners and sports event tickets, I'm guessing.