7 Biggest challenges in enterprise UX and how to overcome them?

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Enterprise UX has grown increasingly important as firms transition from a traditional staff to a remote workforce. Companies all across the world have begun to devote time, money, and effort to developing effective business software solutions.

You need an experienced enterprise UX design company to develop a good enterprise software application. However, developing and managing it comes with a number of challenges..

We’ve developed a list of issues you could encounter when designing enterprise software. Let’s look at some of the issues in enterprise UX design.

Meaning of enterprise UX

Enterprise UX is a relatively new phrase in design, with no universally accepted definition. Although numerous industrial UX manuals have differing definitions, it is difficult to get a consensus among them.

The design of software programmes that service very big businesses and enormous numbers of users is known as enterprise UX.

The Enterprise UX process aims to understand people’s needs, goals, drivers, and pain points as they go about their daily tasks, resulting in a more positive, effective, efficient, and pleasurable experience.

In order to understand the issues users experience when using corporate software, primary user research (ethnography and usability testing) in a business setting is critical.

The UX design of enterprise applications is sometimes equally as critical as the design of information archives, navigation, workflows, and processes.

Goals of enterprise UX

The main purpose of UX design in business is to increase the productivity and efficiency of the employees and management by improving the utility, simplicity of use, and enjoyment of interacting with a product.

Given below are some of the goals of Enterprise UX:

1. Performance

Employees expect an app to respond immediately because no one enjoys waiting. This issue is more essential in a commercial context because if the software is slow or difficult to use, hours are lost and productivity gets affected.

2. Functionality

Routine work should be automated and simplified, allowing personnel to focus on more complicated concerns.

3. Integration, portability, and compatibility

Since manual data transfer is an enormous amount of effort with the current amount of information, the program should easily support different formats to transfer data.

4. Reliability

Errors in the system’s operation can be highly damaging to both users and the firm. No one is likely to be pleased with inaccurate computations or data loss.

5. Simplicity and convenience

Even the most efficient and functioning platform will not be able to optimize a company’s work if users cannot figure out how to use it. A business application’s major goal is to make it simple to use.

Common applications Of enterprise UX

Leading enterprises worldwide recognize the value of Enterprise UX and seek out the best tools with which to work.

These tools and software improve the efficiency of the workforce and improve the experience of its end users.

The following are some of the most common enterprise UX applications.

• Sales
• CRM
• HRMS
• Finance

Let’s have a look at each of them.

1. Sales

Marketing tools, SEO software packages, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and other comparable services are purchased by many businesses.

These tools are used in various ways by businesses, but the main purpose is to boost business, increase sales, and acquire a competitive advantage.

2. CRM

Enterprise UX design is very important from the customer’s perspective to improve their experience and increase satisfaction.

These technologies ensure that customers have the finest possible experience and in a straightforward manner.

The tool’s design is crucial here as well. End-user experience is strongly dependent on the design of enterprise software or services in various cases, including but not limited to conversion funnels and purchase journeys.

3. HRMS

Employee satisfaction is one of the most significant features of organisational UX design.

When businesses purchase a tool, product, or service for their employees, they want to know how it will affect the way they conduct business.

This implies that the product or service should assist in completing a job and make the employees happy.

No matter how valuable the design is, employees will not engage with the design more frequently if it is too difficult to deal with, thus affecting the sales and Return On Investment (ROI).

4. Finance

Finance module is one of the most crucial modules as it integrates with almost all other modules of the ERP – production, sales, shipping, management, etc. All transactions are available from any device and in any location.

This finance module can comprise of following:

• Accounting
• Payment systems
• Financial Analytics & Reporting
• Forecasting

Challenges in enterprise UX

Given below are a few challenges that you will face while working with Enterprise UX:

1. Aligning business goals with the product

As a designer, you should be aware of the business goals and a perspective on the various requirements and needs that your product is going to address.

By sharing this information with the design team, they would give due diligence to the business goals while developing the product.

How to solve this?

Introducing a framework can streamline your process and improve collaboration. We suggest you go with the User-Centered Business framework.

This framework focuses on:

• Existing solutions – Initial research of what you’re competing against
• Early adopters – Enthusiasts who test your products and do interviews about it
• User fears – Addressing user fears with communication before it becomes a major pain point

It is very detailed and thorough. It is designed to highlight every important aspect of the product, business, and its users.

2. The buyer is not the end-user

The distance between a product’s end-users and decision-makers may be longer than the corridors in enterprise UX.

Since C-level decision-makers and other senior people drive the purchase process, the end-user is frequently underrepresented.

End consumers often have little or no say in whether or not they use a product. It is purchased on their behalf and implemented.

How to solve this?

It’s important to understand the users who will eventually interact with the software.

We can study distinct clusters of demands by segmenting the models into meaningful groupings.

We may then tailor our solutions to match the demands of distinct categories like sales, HR, finance, etc.

3. Lack of executive buy-in

Executives and designers don’t always speak the same language. UX strategy might be difficult to grasp if you aren’t in the area.

Designers are unaware of all of the project’s financial reasons, while executives are unaware of the creative process. Both parties are concerned about their deadlines and budgets, so they bring their problems to the table.

How to deal with It?

Both parties should talk about their problems and try to agree.

4. Understanding the business

This is important for researchers working for companies and businesses. Different individual jobs dedicated to specific job functions may exist in a major organization’s department. When it comes to medium businesses, it shrinks, resulting in employees working in a variety of roles. A single person may be responsible for the entire department in small businesses.

How to solve this?

A researcher must understand how people function individually and in teams to encourage better proposals for all of them. This is important to understand the business as a whole.

5. Collaboration is not easy as it may seem

Collaboration in a multifunctional organization is a difficult task.

Lack of collaboration leads to poor communication, which subsequently results in poor design, mistrust, and the eventual collapse of the UX design process.

The user-centered design relies on multidisciplinary teams. You get everyone on the same page and on the same level by having interactions with product managers, developers, QA engineers, designers, and marketers.

In practice, management reluctance and a long history of organizational silos can make collaboration difficult. Collaborative teams collapse because of silos.

As a result, cross-disciplinary dialogue suffers, as do mistrust and finger-pointing.

How to deal with it?

Building inter-organizational trust by being open to thoughts and opinions could improve collaboration significantly.

6. Transitioning from legacy to modern systems

Some legacy systems existed long before user design became popular. Employees may be hesitant to give them up because they have been using them for so long. However, these systems can sometimes be redesigned. Other times, you’ll have to find creative solutions to problems.

How to deal with it?

Expect opposition to change if you’re revamping legacy technology. Get input from users to learn what they like and dislike about the old system. You develop goodwill and improve user experience by providing popular features and clearing up what was previously muddled.

Attend UX events to learn about new methods to improve the user experience. Professionals from various professions can contribute to a better understanding of user experience from various perspectives.

7. Keeping the UI simple

You want to make an app that your staff will like using. However, there are far too many complaints in this area concerning sophisticated corporate software: poor landing processes, a confusing user interface, and slow responsiveness. You’ve seen how it appears. People dislike using business applications. It becomes difficult to keep the user interface simple.

How to deal with this?

Domain research can help you solve this difficulty. It will assist you in becoming more familiar with your product domain and will bring you closer to the “Empathy stage.” With domain research, you can communicate with engineering teams and consumers or customers in a similar language.

Final word

Enterprise applications are required to optimize company operations, therefore these systems must first and foremost complete the responsibilities allocated to them.

However, there are some business UX problems that designers should be aware of while working on such high-stakes projects.

It’s critical for aspiring designers and newcomers to the field of UI/UX design to grasp what enterprise UX comprises and what they should be aware of before embarking on such projects.

Enterprise UX design has a bright future ahead of it, and we’ll see some amazing solutions in the next few years.

Related articles:

7 Reasons Why Usability is Key to Enterprise UX

Importance of User Research for Enterprise UX