The cure for afflicting corporate culture

good morning! Employees are drowning in a sea of ​​apps. But rescuing them is a harder task than it looks.

Bloated Fighting Software

1,200. This is the average number of times her office worker switches between applications during her work day. Equally astonishing, the number of apps the average enterprise operates has risen to 187, up from 77 in 2015. But despite IT’s growth over the last seven years, federal data shows worker productivity has slowed at a sluggish pace, prompting the question, “What’s the benefit of all this technology?” is occurring.

It’s no surprise that businesses are clogged with many potentially unwanted applications. For decades, IT vendors have convinced companies that their inefficiencies can be resolved by adopting yet another new program.

• The rise of software as a service only exacerbated this problem by making it easier for companies to deploy new products without going through an IT gatekeeper.
• Add in the fact that most large companies have acquired a number of small businesses with their own IT stacks, and are making the transition to remote work that seems to require a whole new set of apps, and it’s easy to do that. understand. Your portfolio will quickly get out of hand.

Industry experts say behind the scenes that most technology portfolios within companies are dense. Not all software is snake oil. However, many cannot achieve success alone. Instead, the real value comes when different apps work together. As such, companies like Oracle have long touted the potential cost savings that come from consolidating their suites.

• Even for products purchased from the same vendor, this is more expected than reality. As a result, companies must seek costly help from consultants and even more software vendors to piece together these disparate systems.

Those efforts have clearly been unsuccessful. Users still have to switch between different systems to get their work done. Basic tasks still require substantial human intervention. Also, businesses do not immediately have answers to basic questions such as “How many employees do you have?”

• CEOs and tech leaders have little choice. Once the software is deployed across the enterprise, it is difficult to junk the app due to employee opposition, among other factors. Even with a higher monthly bill, the ROI rarely justifies the cost. It’s easier to ride things.
• So companies like Oracle and IBM continue to scrape the dough out of aging software. That’s slowly changing as new options emerge. But even as these companies move to modern technology, many of these legacy systems still run in the background.
• Part of the problem is also in the dynamics of working in a company. If the department is given a budget for technology, it will be used.

The world of business software is undergoing changes that promise a fix. Instead of building software for specific functions, providers are increasingly looking to build tools to manage the entire process. Video software that handles everything from procurement to distribution and settlement, not just procurement.

• That’s why marketing materials from Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, and others focus on the concept of “workflow.” This means trying to integrate widely used systems into her one user interface to prevent the dreaded tab switching. This is basically a stopgap to the underlying problem of app bloat. This stems from the same vendor overselling customers what they probably don’t need.
• We have also invested heavily in programs that can analyze information stored in multiple core systems across the enterprise. It’s a trend that promises to enable companies to finally use decades of collected data for competitive advantage.
• New vendors are also building core systems to make it easier to plug in external sources. For example, combining Asana and Slack allows admins to easily track employee work without annoying app switching.

Software is an industry built on high expectations and low deliveries. But despite some scary stories, it’s clear that companies that invest early in the right technology can quickly overtake their rivals.

• As IT penetrates deeper and deeper into the enterprise, it’s imperative that leaders become smarter buyers. This is a difficult task as vendors are constantly pushing new payment models and “categories” of required technology.
• A smart company is no longer just a company that spends a lot of money to get a ton of new applications. As the program becomes more sophisticated, success requires a very strategic approach and dedicated resources to support the integration. For example, alongside developers, an IT department might consider hiring a user experience expert to streamline their work.

Technology leaders often say that we are still early in a long digital modernization journey. In that case, fasten your seatbelt as the road ahead is bumpy. Also, given the track record of the software industry, customers may have to pave some of it themselves.

A message from Capital One Software

Many business leaders don’t know where to start when it comes to moving to the cloud. To help organizations adapt to this revolution, Capital One launched Capital One Software. This is a new enterprise B2B software business focused on providing cloud and data management solutions.

learn more

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A message from Capital One Software

The flexibility of the cloud enables companies like Capital One to unlock access to data with performance that scales instantly. However, this flexibility and scale can also pose unique challenges for organizations and users less adept at cloud optimization.

learn more

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