Key Elements of Enterprise UX
This article is a sample chapter from my book UX Design for the Enterprise: Helping Users Get Work Done.
At the highest level, enterprise systems serve the needs of an organization, while consumer systems serve the needs of individuals or families. This distinction, however, is not always as simple as this definition implies. Organizations use many types of applications, including general purpose business applications such as Microsoft Office, Zoom, and Slack that have crossover use for consumers. Other applications are found exclusively in the enterprise and would have no use for consumers (for example, a human resource management system). This book focuses on what I consider “true” enterprise systems: systems found exclusively within an enterprise. As we’ll see, these systems are characterized by unique design considerations and demands.
Enterprise systems may be designed for a specific industry (such as healthcare, manufacturing, education, or retail) or target a particular business function applicable across industries (for example, payroll, human resources, or customer relationships). Additionally, enterprise systems may support content consumption, task performance, or both. Company intranets are typically focused on content, though many also help employees perform routine administrative tasks. Systems supporting business functions are typically task-focused, though there is often the need for supporting content (for example, a call center application with an integrated knowledge base).
In this chapter, we’ll look at key elements of the enterprise experience, including:
- Buying versus building an enterprise system
- Enterprise systems’ role in service delivery
- The need to support both business goals and users’ needs
Buying vs. Building an Enterprise System
Enterprise systems may be commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products or custom developed by a company for its exclusive use.
Commercial Enterprise Systems
COTS systems offer a ready-made solution for organizations. For virtually any industry need or organizational function, there is a commercial enterprise system to be had. Some systems can even become de-facto standards within an industry or business discipline — which is the aim of every vendor! In a medical clinic, you might see nurses and physicians using the Epic Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. Network security specialists use the popular LogRhythm Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to identify threats. SAP SuccessFactors helps human resources professionals recruit and manage a workforce. Folks involved in software development are likely familiar (perhaps reluctantly) with Jira, which allows teams to plan and track development work. All of these examples represent leading commercial enterprise systems in their domain.
Enterprise software vendors do their best to accommodate needs across their customer base. These systems generally offer some customization options, but implementing an off-the-shelf solution usually requires organizations to adapt their workflows to what the selected solution can support. This lack of flexibility can lead organizations to develop custom software to meet their needs.
Custom Software
Developing custom software is risky, particularly for organizations that lack experience with software development. Even under the best circumstances, it can be challenging to accurately estimate the costs and timeline associated with large custom software development projects. A web search on “failed custom software projects” provides high-profile examples of projects that came off the tracks and never served their intended purpose. Custom software development may suffer from shifting requirements, cost overruns, and poor technical decision making. The design of these systems may be engineering-driven, absent the user-centered approach needed to make them usable for their intended audience.
Despite the risks, organizations may have compelling reasons to choose a custom solution. First and foremost is creating a solution that matches the organization’s needs exactly. Additionally, organizations may want to avoid a long-term relationship with a vendor, which involves ongoing licensing costs for a solution and a dependency on how and when the vendor updates their product.
Low-Code Platforms
A middle ground between build and buy is using a low-code platform such as Salesforce and ServiceNow. Rather than writing lines of code from scratch, developers or even non-developers, such as business analysts, can build applications using pre-existing modules. Though organizations can create highly customized workflows, the options are not infinite, and the user experience can feel limited by the front-end components available in the platform. Despite the constraints, low-code platforms are an increasingly popular option because of the speed and flexibility they provide.
Enterprise Systems’ Role in Service Delivery
Especially with systems used by frontline employees, enterprise systems can significantly impact the level of service that organizations can provide to their customers. In the Preface, I shared my real-world experience with this as a patient, as my doctor struggled to enter a lab order for me in a newly implemented medical records system.
Let’s imagine another example: a financial institution, Acme Bank. The AcmeBank.com website and the Acme Bank app have online banking and other self-serve functions for customers. These are customer-facing systems, so of course Acme Bank wants its customers to have a great experience there. But customers are also impacted by the customer service system that branch personnel use. If that system is too difficult to use, customer service will suffer as tellers and bankers struggle with using it (likely in full view of customers).
Even systems that are further removed from the customer experience can have an impact. Imagine that mortgage lending personnel rely on a loan processing system, but the system is too difficult to navigate. In this case, customer service will suffer as personnel are less equipped to respond to customer issues and questions as they arise.
Integration with Customer-Facing Systems
A customer-facing system may be integral to an enterprise workflow. For example:
- A claims processing workflow begins with a customer submitting a claim using a customer-facing system.
- The employee-facing system for claims processing receives the claim.
- As the claim moves through the enterprise workflow, the customer-facing system is updated with the claim status.
The figure below illustrates this workflow.
Supporting Business Goals
Fundamentally, enterprise systems exist to solve business problems. The user experience is critical in that process, but user goals (make my job easier!) can conflict with business needs (we have a legal requirement to follow this policy!). In their book Building Products for the Enterprise, Benjamin Gaines and Blair Reeves state it succinctly:
“Business problems are common to the entire organization. Fixing user problems can delight your users, which is very important, but they do not necessarily deliver the solutions to the business challenges.”
A key element, therefore, in designing for the enterprise is understanding the business goals that the system needs to support.
Three Key Business Goals
Businesses strive to be profitable. Their revenue, which is the amount of money they take in, must exceed their costs, which is the amount of money that flows out. An organization can achieve (or increase) its profit in two ways: by increasing revenue or by reducing costs. Increasing revenue, however, is key to growing a business. Even non-profit organizations must balance the money they receive with the expenses they incur in order to operate.
Thus, we can identify two high-level business goals:
- Increase revenue
- Decrease costs
To generate revenue, organizations must produce quality products or services that serve their intended market. Non-profits must provide quality services to the communities they target.
This gives us a third high-level business goal:
- Increase quality
These three goals (increase revenue, decrease costs, increase quality) are general buckets we can use to characterize the general purpose of some common enterprise systems.
Increase Revenue
The enterprise system most associated with increasing revenue are customer relationship management (CRM) systems. CRM systems manage relationships with customers and potential customers to maximize sales.
Decrease Costs
Organizations often implement systems to help them operate more efficiently, thus reducing costs. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a classic example. True to its name, ERP systems are deployed across all or most of an enterprise, providing data integration across organizational functions such as accounting, procurement, project management, and the supply chain. This level of integration helps streamline processes and reduce redundancies.
There are also industry-specific applications to help organizations operate efficiently: for example, systems that manage a law practice, construction projects, retail operations, or food service. For practically any industry, as the saying goes, “there’s an app for that.”
Increase Quality
For some business processes, quality is paramount and cost considerations are secondary, for example:
- A claims processing system must ensure that claims are evaluated accurately and fairly.
- A call center’s knowledgebase must help agents provide a high level of customer service.
- In regulated industries, compliance management systems must help companies adhere to the legal requirements that govern their day-to-day activities.
Supporting Multiple Goals
The three main business goals we’ve discussed (increase revenue, decrease costs, increase quality) are not mutually exclusive and may be interrelated. For example, a business intelligence (BI) system can help make processes more efficient; optimizing sales activities leads to more revenue. A knowledgebase in a call system increases service quality and allows agents to resolve problems more efficiently (thus reducing costs).
Expressing and Managing Business Goals
The terms goals and objectives are often used interchangeably, but they can also have a more nuanced meaning. Goals are typically broader and longer-term (for example, increase revenue by $10M in the next quarter). Objectives define specific, measurable activities that support achieving the goal (such as conducting 10 new product demos each week).
An objective and its associated measure may be treated as a key performance indicator (KPI). In the example above, conducting 10 product demos could be a KPI that defines 10 as the target. The organization will measure performance in meeting that target over time. Not every business metric is a KPI; KPIs are measures that make the most impact in achieving a business goal. The figure below summarizes the relationship between goals, objectives, KPIs, and measures.
Why Goals, Objectives, and Measures are Important
Enterprise systems are closely intertwined with an organization’s goals, objectives, and measures. For example, if you were designing a call center application, it’s crucial to understand how the performance of a call center is typically measured. These measures include:
- Average time in queue: the average time callers are stuck in call queues
- Average handle time: the average time agents spend on each call
- First-call resolutions: the percentage of calls where callers’ issues are resolved without transferring, escalating, or returning the call
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): a customer rating how satisfied they were with the service they received
Any call center application must be designed to help minimize average time in queue and handle time, maximize the number of first-call resolutions, and maximize customer satisfaction scores.
Measures Drive User Behavior
Keep in mind that performance measures and particularly KPIs drive the behavior of enterprise users. I worked recently with a call center whose main KPI was first-call resolution. They still measured other factors, including customer satisfaction scores, but these measures did not have the emphasis or visibility of first-call resolution. Note how this measure addressed both efficiency (costs) and quality issues:
- A high percentage of first-call resolutions meant handling fewer calls in the call center
- Customers whose problems were addressed in one call were more satisfied with the service received
In this organization, agents were very motivated to resolve customer issues on the first call, and were especially frustrated by barriers in achieving it, such as the need to consult with subject matter experts (SMEs) to help resolve more complex issues.
Supporting User Needs
Supporting user needs is critical. Users are closest to the work and keenly aware of its realities and challenges.
Unique Characteristics of Enterprise UX
If you’re new to designing for the enterprise, there are fundamental ways enterprise UX differs from consumer UX. To understand the enterprise users’ needs, it’s important to understand some key aspects of their situation.
First, enterprise users don’t have a choice in what they get to use. Enterprise systems are nearly always imposed upon users as a job requirement. The people purchasing or developing the system (typically IT executives) can be far removed from the work that needs to be done. This disconnect between system purchasers and system users can result in terrible system usability, a reputation that persists today. Thankfully, the traditional disregard for enterprise UX has eased recently, as discussed in the last chapter. However, when a poorly designed system makes people’s work life difficult, they cannot vote with their feet (except for quitting their job altogether).
Second, many enterprise systems must support “all day, every day” use. People’s compensation may be partly based on the quantity or quality of work they produce. This type of use puts significant performance pressure on the UX design. Even minor design flubs can have an outsized impact and can feel like a “death by a thousand paper cuts.” For example, I recently worked on a compliance management system that required two extra clicks to submit a compliance evaluation: the system first displayed a review page that users had to confirm. Then it displayed a confirmation page the users had to dismiss. The intent was to allow the user to review the information before submitting and communicate that the submission was successful. However, consider the impact of those extra clicks for someone who spends all day submitting compliance evaluations. When we talked to users, honestly, they were losing their minds over these additional steps. They reviewed their work before hitting submit anyway (because it’s easier to fix errors at that point) and saw no need for the confirmation page. Removing these extra steps was an easy fix with a big impact.
Third, enterprise UX usually involves interdependent (and complex) business workflows. Enterprise workflows typically involve multiple people, sometimes across different functional areas. Compare that with a “customer journey,” where you focus on a single individual achieving their desired goal. In Chapter 4, we’ll look at enterprise journey mapping in detail, but at a minimum, designing for the enterprise means understanding what processes are upstream and downstream of any particular function.
Providing a Consumer-Grade Experience
Despite the above factors, users still deserve a consumer-grade experience. The idea of consumer-grade (versus consumer-like) experiences comes from a talk by Alan Baumgarten at the 2018 Convey UX conference, who presented this definition of consumer-grade:
- Consumer-grade is contemporary. The user interface looks new, modern, and elegant. Styles are regularly updated to keep the design fresh.
- Consumer-grade implies desirability. Professionals often don’t have a choice in the technology they use, but the quality of the experience should assume that they do.
- Consumer-grade is intuitive. Even highly trained professionals should immediately feel comfortable seeing enterprise solutions for the first time. They recognize elements that align with their job. Task flows are sensible and obvious.
Creating a consumer-grade experience is critical to the success of any enterprise system. Chapter 7, “Design Principles for the Enterprise,” contains more about supporting the needs of enterprise users.
Conclusion
This chapter outlines key differences between enterprise and consumer experiences and the importance of understanding the business goals and business context supported by enterprise systems. Understanding business goals is an essential aspect of designing for the enterprise, equally important as understanding user needs and goals.
In the next chapter, “Enterprise Product Strategy and Management,” we’ll look more specifically at how enterprise products are developed.
This article is a sample chapter from my book UX Design for the Enterprise: Helping Users Get Work Done.
