Reduce Support Costs By Keeping Things Simple
Why does the iPhone have a User Interface that is vastly superior to the majority of applications, while having a fraction of the horsepower that desktops/laptops do?
The largest Swiss Army knife has some 87 tools and 114 functions, and barely fits into a large pants pocket. In many ways, most software today is like that giant knife, but there is one very glaring difference. The Swiss knife’s price reflects the physical materials and automated assembly that brings it into being, while the incremental cost of software production is essentially zero. Software’s actual price, as distinguished from cost, is obscured by a host off hidden costs that, ultimately, are related to usability and support. Everyone pays for this inefficiency, but customers pay the most in lost productivity.
Software is developed by, well, software developers, who as a class like new things and change and cleverness and complexity. Developers are often managed by ex-developers, who previously productive activities shared a techie mindset. Technical managers’ managers are driven by sales quotas and worrying about things like burn rate. Crowded markets are classically handled by segmentation and product differentiation, which in the case of software usually means new features and functions and decidedly new looks and feels.
The early Volkswagen was successful by changing little on the outside while continually improving the inside. Lexus adopted the same strategy from its beginning, which initially wasn’t all that promising. Going further back, domestic TV manufacturers’ focus on serviceability, an early form of call center, was trumped by the focus on reliability by off shore manufacturers.
The most popular Swiss Army knifes, based on volume, have less than five tools and fit quite nicely in pretty much any pocket. Easy to build and easy to use, they don’t require a call center or online FAQ site to master. While many examples of software products can be paraded to show intimidating and deliberate complexity (MS’ Vista comes to mind all too quickly), perhaps the worst example of enterprise application software is, or perhaps was, Loan Origination Systems, with their myriad mile-wide and ocean-deep data grids, about to be topped for sheer mindless complexity by Electronic Health Records.
We have a simple test for gauging the complexity of software, including ours, summed up in a simple phrase: All instructions have to be above the fold.
Tags: keeping things simple, loan origination systems, software bloat, software support costs, uneeded call centers