When "good enough", isn't. The ugly truth about B2B software.
- NW Business Collective
- Sep 24, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 17, 2024
How did we get to a place where we find ourselves fighting a losing battle against all of the software and tools that are supposed to make our lives easier?
July 19th, 2024 brought us a story of major crashes across the globe due to yet another software failure. Countless industries were affected, many coming to screeching halts. Airlines, 911 emergency lines, and hospitals were on far too long of a list of those impacted. The unfortunate reality is that these "glitches" and outages have become all too common. Microsoft estimated 8.5 million devices were affected by the CrowdStrike outage. But what about the smaller outages and issues that impact our lives and business on practically a daily basis? While many tech companies consider these problems to be "inconvenient", there is also an inherent acceptance rooted in their practices that enable these issues to keep happening; regardless of the fact they're creating constant havoc in all of our lives.
Big stories like the CrowdStrike outages grab the attention of the media for a few short news cycles. What isn't being covered is that every day there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are being exhausted and overwhelmed by countless problems with the exact technology that is supposed to be helping them. Many of those people are operating small and medium sized businesses, a community that is being grossly underserved.
The tech industry needs to do better.
Public apologies and scripted remorse don't mean much when the reality is that far too many companies have put growth and profits above quality and their customers. "Good enough" has become a baseline for too much tech. It's not good enough, not even close. A counter to this viewpoint are sentiments like "perfect is the enemy of done". I agree things have to keep moving forward, but the pendulum has swung way too far and things need to be rebalanced.
I work with businesses every day who are held hostage by the growing failures of technology. There are many systemic issues contributing to the problem, but here are the biggest ones based on what I've observed over the years:
Cutting back on QA testing
Quality and bug testing have been deprioritized and hugely scaled back on in recent years. There is a gap in understanding around the true value of in-depth testing and the specific expertise needed to do it well. By skimping on (or skipping entirely) this critical step, the burden of uncovering issues is often passed onto the customers, many of whom are paying clients in B2B environments.
Failing corporate management structures
Layers of company politics create environments where real success is unattainable. Too often I've seen managers more concerned with checking boxes on reports and polishing metrics than quality of work and doing the right thing for their users. Besides being unsustainable, it pushes workers towards burnout. Reluctance to change and failure to address systemic issues perpetuate the cycle, leaving customers in a state of constant disappointment.
The ever-expanding gap between business knowledge and the people building business software
I've been watching this trend for over a decade of B2B (used by businesses) software mimicing B2C (used by consumers) experiences. Those two use cases have completely different needs. As a result, the technology that is supposed to make business easier is actively derailing workflows, creating endless frustration, and slowing everything down. The gap comes from of a lack of understanding in what the software is actually supposed to do from a process perspective. It often manifests as the tool trying too hard and oversimplify tasks in an effort to make things "easy". Instead, there are often critical steps in the process that are left out and the work take 4x longer than it should.
All of these issues lead to a steady stream of new products and updates that often make things worse before making anything better. It doesn't have to be this way. Businesses deserve better. We all deserve better.