Why Enterprise UX Is Important

Enterprise UX may be one of the most important parts of any modern business. Enterprise software is used by millions of businesses across the globe for internal communication. Good enterprise UX facilitates and streamlines processes that could otherwise have been neglected. It allows designers to develop corporate solutions by using the latest UX trends and makes key insights a lot easier to discern.

Admittedly, UX design has seen a huge rise in popularity in recent years, with businesses realising the importance of improving the usability of their products. But the attention has now shifted internally to enterprise UX, which has been criticised of late for a lack of attention to end-user satisfaction. People are finally realising the importance of a good employee experience which can be directly correlated with productivity.

Enhanced awareness and focus on enterprise UX gives businesses the opportunity to greatly increase motivation, efficiency and ease of collaboration. In this article, we will explore all of the reasons why enterprise UX is important and teach you how to effectively use enterprise applications to bolster your businesses productivity.

What Is Enterprise UX?

Defining enterprise UX is actually quite simple. It's the design of products for people at work. It's important to note that enterprise UX isn't limited to internal corporate systems and is an expansive medium, extending into many different areas. But at its core, enterprise UX should be used to help workers to do their jobs by streamlining internal processes and simplifying protocols.

Why Is Enterprise UX important?

During enterprise application product development projects, enterprise UX often takes a backseat. Designers tend to focus on product functionality whilst the end-user experience is frequently ignored. Everything from task management systems, HR portals, intranet and CRM's are disregarded until the last minute. This leaves frustrated employees having to deal with badly designed systems that are counterintuitive and nonsensical.

Nowadays executives are realising the importance of effective enterprise UX design and are investing more time, effort and money into nurturing and facilitating internal processes. Employees are quickly becoming the perfect testing ground for new enterprise software design because they bring unique perspectives to the table and can test, examine tools and can offer valuable feedback to their employers.

The Difference Between Customer UX and Enterprise UX

Customer UX

Customer UX, also known as 'Consumer UX' is a user experience that is defined by the experience of using apps and other digital solutions. Consumer UX is generally created for and geared towards consumers and the general public.

Enterprise UX

Enterprise UX is the complete opposite and is applied to the internal software of a business and is principally used by its employees to streamline processes.

There are a further two differences between the types of UX design and can be categorised as follows:

Scale

When thinking about scale, UX designers usually have access to key information about their target audience. Gender, age and occupation all play an important role in defining the characteristics of the project. Usually, the scalability of a software product isn't known until it's put on the market, which can cause a fair amount of uncertainty.

Landscape

When a project's landscape is studied, comprehensive market research is used to gather important data, but it doesn't identify or specify the individuals or groups that will use a particular product.

Designing Enterprise Software

When it comes to designing enterprise UX software, the focused user group is known from the outset. This means that the team working on the enterprise UX design will know how to develop a competent solution. Making use of all available data is important at this point because the scaling is limited to the projected size of the business.

The Role Of End Users

Exceeding user expectations is the most important part of enterprise UX design. Customer-orientated products are all steered by user expectations, pan points and feedback. It's in the decision-makers interest to have intuitive products that serve a useful purpose. Simply put, if a user's needs aren't considered or met, then the product will automatically be deemed a failure and will receive fewer sales or downloads.

Enterprise UX is used by businesses to transform expansive digital processes. In some cases, usability isn't high up on the design roster and can hurt internal productivity. Employees are the end-users of enterprise UX and in general, rarely consulted about corporate business systems. End-user feedback is an imperative basis for successful enterprise UX and allows for internal software application improvements to be made relatively easily.

Decision-makers tend to have a skewed view of internal software systems and sometimes make judgments based on functional and top-level project management requirements. They rarely take into consideration the design and usability factors, which can leave some employees feeling resentful. Some internal systems have been described as being clunky, sluggish and hard to use.

Why UX Is Key To Enterprise Software

In the short term, businesses can save money by focusing on product functionality, with little interest in usability for the end-user. But, doing so means that more is lost over time and the advantages that quality UX design brings are lost.

Here are the reasons why enterprise UX should be an important part of your business model.

Better Productivity

Executives tend to cut corners and try to save money when designing enterprise UX. A well thought out enterprise software design can benefit your business in the long term and produce a greater cumulative return over time. Corporate software that is easy to use assists employees in completing routine tasks. This helps to boost productivity and motivation, which inevitably leads to greater profits.

Better Understanding Of Data

In the digital age, vast swathes of data need to be internally processed on a daily basis. Effective enterprise UX is used to collate, understand and interpret data in record time. Key insights are the most important part of crunching data. When corporate solutions are identified with the end-user needs in mind, insights are much easier to identify.

Crucial UX elements such as dashboards, data visualisation and user journeys are all used to discern information with minimal effort.

Simplified Internal Structures

Effective cooperation is one of the simplest ways to garner success in a group activity. Workflows are no different but development teams have sometimes been known to build corporate software without heeding the basics of enterprise UX.

Good enterprise UX design considers the overall behaviour of the employees within an organisation whilst assessing micro-actions that make teamwork reflexive and easy. Enterprise UX designers need to fundamentally make sure that the interactions they create in their software systems are autonomous and relate to our real-life environments.

Conclusion

In the digital age, effective UX design is more important than ever before, especially for corporate software. It provides inherent value and goes a lot further than you might think. When end-user needs are taken into consideration, productivity increases as a direct result. This directly impacts a businesses profits and allows for processes to be further streamlined in the future.

Good enterprise UX design can also be used to work with and collate big data. This, in turn, allows employees to collaborate constructively and find new ways of working. Investing in practical enterprise UX is a surefire way to strengthen and reinforce internal processes whilst maximising productivity at the same time.

Businesses that have adopted successful enterprise UX strategies are 50% more likely to have employees that take an active role in pushing further and maximising revenue streams.