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The most fundamental theorem of Enterprise software is that the users aren’t the the customer, and so UX issues fall to the very bottom of the priority list. So
by jl6 4y ago
The most fundamental theorem of Enterprise software is that the users aren’t the the customer, and so UX issues fall to the very bottom of the priority list. So the explanation is very plausible.
Furthermore, amongst the already-low-priority UX issues, I can imagine UX of the expenses application being rock bottom, because which business ever called up their ERP vendor and said “we need to make it easier for our staff to claim expenses”?
- GuB-42 4y agoThis is something I never understood about enterprise software. No one should understand better than companies with employees that time is money. If your employees spend an extra hour each month dealing with bad software, that's an hour of unproductive time you are paying for. Even if your employees tend to work unpaid overtime (boooo), that's still an hour of unpaid overtime that could have been used to do actual work. And employees are definitely going to spend the time necessary to claim expenses. They may skimp on other tasks, but expenses are money, so they are definitely not going to miss that one. Big companies love metrics and spying on you, and the time spend on corporate apps is an easy thing to measure. So if you see that your employees spend countless hours on ERP, it should rise tons of red flags.
- IshKebab 4y ago> which business ever called up their ERP vendor and said “we need to make it easier for our staff to claim expenses”? Businesses that were fed up with fielding questions from employees about how to claim expenses? In my experience it's reasonably common for companies to switch expense claim systems because their existing one was rubbish. I haven't worked for any SAP-using megacorps though tbf.
- pavlov 4y agoThere’s Expensify which is supposed to have a very good UX and does about $200M annual revenue. So at least that much people are willing to pay for a better expense claim tool.
- raverbashing 4y agoExpensify is much easier to use than Concur But their sales team probably plays less golf, let's put it this way
- tw98521358 4y agoThat’s got to be like a tiny fraction of SAP
- jimnotgym 4y agoThat is the crux of it. I have a background in finance, and I think everyone is missing the problem that this is trying to solve. People are careless when they claim expenses. They claim for things they lost the receipt for and then they try and pressure some accounts clerk into forcing it through. They make careless mistakes like multiplying their milage by the wrong rate, because they don't see why they should have to look up the right one. Then their line manager doesn't get around to signing it off, so employee chases accounts team, and accounts team have to chase approvers. Senior people are usually worst. The accounts team then hand to justify why they processed a claim despite x,y and z...to external auditors. Setting an expectation that if you don't get it right up front, the computer won't let you through is a very powerful selling point to a CFO who has to control this rubbish
- rwmj 4y agoThis would be true if they weren't employees of the same company who are wasting time on make-work nonsense when they could be doing something productive.
- Moissanite 4y agoWouldn't a flat per diem payment make more sense then? That way you don't need the complex (and presumably pricey) expenses software, and you don't torture your employees with it when they could be doing something useful.
- hef19898 4y agoDepending on jurisdiction, taxes. So it is most likely not the company responsible for the "torturing"...
- oogali 4y agoThis. In the US, maximum allowable per diem rates vary by location and are set by the Internal Revenue Service. https://www.gsa.gov/perdiem https://www.gsa.gov/perdiem
- 4y ago