Huge companies always strive to optimize all possible processes. And a comfortable user experience in enterprise software is one of the points that large companies have only recently begun to pay attention to. A user-friendly interface in industrial software is a great key to simplifying many routine processes, speeding up the workflow, and reducing the number of mistakes that can lead to monetary losses.
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The user-friendly design of the enterprise UX is exactly what helps achieve this workflow optimization.
Today we will dive into the enterprise UX topic. We’ll find out what it is, the best ways to approach the enterprise UX design process, and how to make everything right. Without further ado, let’s begin.
What’s Going On With Enterprise UX in 2020?
First, let’s define what enterprise UX design is. Enterprise UX design allows creating user-friendly interfaces that greatly simplify business workflow and automate various tasks in large companies that depend on a streamlined workflow that runs like clockwork.
To make things simple, it’s a type of software made for business employees who maintain various tasks in large companies, and this software provides a more efficient workflow. This type of software is pretty diverse and can fulfill various tasks. Good examples of this software are:
- Project management systems (Jira, Basecamp)
- CRM’s (Salesforce, HubSpot CRM)
- ERP’s (Infor CloudSuite Industrial, Allscripts)
But how are things going with enterprise UX in 2020? I’m glad to say that they’re beyond perfect. This design branch raises its popularity over the past few years since more entrepreneurs are catching the idea of convenient enterprise software design. The more user-friendly UX is, the more efficient staff will work and the more funds the company will raise.
Moreover, did you know that a lot of top-notch enterprises that sell goods are fully design-driven? The reason for that is simple. Without a good-polished and friendly design, these companies can’t sell their goods in such huge quantities.
Below you can see a detailed statistic and a list of enterprises that prosper over the past ten years sticking with modern design tendencies. Besides, these stats show a graph that visualizes enterprises that are not paying attention to the design aspect, leading to lower stock prices.
How to Make Over-The-Top Enterprise UX?
Creating enterprise UX is not an easy task. Designers that create enterprise UX always combine complicated business aspects with easy-to-catch and fancy interfaces.
To make you closer to your dream enterprise UX, I’ve written down these steps to guide you through this complicated process.
Step #1. Define Vital Enterprise Needs
Software is made to make our life easier and solve problems that we are facing every day. And these problems may overlap with each other in various software. Same situation with enterprise software. Every enterprise software has familiar things that I’ll list below:
Data model
Absolutely every software has a data model. Within this model, there are many different data with specific attributes and actions assigned to it.
The complexity of such models often depends on the application itself. The more complex the app is, the larger this data model, and the more tiers it has.
Customization
Customization is key for convenient and useful user experience. This aspect will satisfy various customer’s needs. Besides, no one will buy several software products to fulfill one main task.
For instance, If you’ll neglect the sales features in UX design, users will utilize different software solutions that satisfy their needs.
Ecosystem
The ecosystem is a common thing in the software world. Remember how Google unites its vast amount of services? That’s an example of a good ecosystem. It would be wise to step toward ecosystem features in enterprise UX designs since the app may require integration with other software from other vendors.
Sales channel
Sales processes are quite difficult, and when developing enterprise UX design, you should take them into account. To make things simple, it would be wise to stay in constant touch with the sales department and development team representatives to clarify all vital details both from the tech and business sides.
Step #2. Define Target Audience
Remember that enterprise UX must be convenient and useful for all departments. Here’s a short list of possible departments that may be a target audience for this design branch.
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- Product team department. Well-developed UX will increase work efficiency with the automation of some routine and time-consuming tasks.
- Marketing department. Thorough UX will open vast opportunities for brand development, which brings more customers and more funds accordingly.
- Operations department. Easy-to-catch UX can provide fast access to vital data that saves a lot of time and helps to fulfill tasks faster.
Step #3. Work Out UX Design
Users love well-polished and fancy interfaces. Moreover, if users like the product’s looks, they may be less harsh if a bug appeared.
Even though this all applicable to enterprise UX, it’s still not easy to make enterprise UX and keep in mind all business processes and their aspects. But how to make app design and keep these aspects together?
I’ll advise you to stick with the “Design success ladder” that’ll help to analyze your enterprise UX design. You can see it in the picture below.
Thanks to this ladder, you can analyze your design in detail from all angles. Each step is a specific aspect that must be performed to the highest level to meet the customers’ needs.
If you want to use some ready-made and cheap UX design solutions, this can lead to the following problems:
- Workers will be unhappy with the software
- Decreased staff performance
- High costs of staff training
- The staff will be distracted trying to understand how the software works. This results in missing opportunities to satisfy clients needs
If you pay attention to the thoughtful UX design, this will bring a lot of advantages, such as:
- Staff productivity will increase significantly
- The staff will be pleased with the work with the user-friendly software
- KPI rates will grow
UX Processes in Enterprise Software
Top-notch UX design of enterprise software will make your workers much more happy and efficient. To bring this design to life, you may require some well-thought processes. I have some advice that may help you with this task.
Learn How Your Employees Work
That’s right! Become a part of the enterprise and watch a little how workers fulfill their tasks. Pay attention to various aspects like what they are happy about and what they don’t like in current software design. Ask some questions to clarify possible ways to resolve workflow issues in a brand new UX design.
Make a List of Priorities
After you made audience research, jot down all your ideas and set priorities for each one of them. Analyze the amount of effort required for each idea and put the most important ideas in the first place of the to-do-list.
Begin to Work
When all is set and done, you can clearly see the goals and ways to reach them. You are fully ready to start creating your enterprise UX design.
Author’s bio
Vitaly Kuprenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile application development company in Ukraine. He enjoys telling about tech innovations and digital ways to boost businesses.