Building on the well known saying used in the title provides us not only with an amusing paradox, but also highlights an almost universal truth: people just won’t work with tools that are too difficult to use. Look at the low adoption of Microsoft’s Vista, or the lacklustre attitude towards early WAP applications for mobiles. Or as a contrast, the massively popular instant messenger that by sheer mass adoption, became a communication tool in many companies, and how Skype is also developing in this area. How things are used, and how they can be made to be used more easily sits high on many companies agendas at the moment- the recent world usability day is testament to this!

Usability and therefore adoption of a software tool is fundamental to not only short term success, i.e. the roll out phase, but also for the long term business plan as staff acceptance enables companies to progress along its technology for business journey. First impressions count- the look and feel is vital. A bad design repels the user – so there is a need to immediately understand what you are supposed to do without any messy help functions or manuals.

It’s really interesting to see how users familiarise themselves with the Basware system and how it fits into one of the easier software tools to use. As is best practice, we use user-centred-design and heuristic evaluations to develop our user interface, and really encourage feedback from the customers and end users, as they are two groups with different requirements- to make it as intuitive and as user friendly as possible.

User experiences must also bear in mind differing needs and cultural perspectives. For example, for color-blind users, you cannot only use red and green colors: the shapes of the icons must also convey their meaning. Similarly, symbols can cause problems in localization. For example the Western representation of the house referring to a “Home Page”, or a letterbox to “Mail” can be misleading. In many countries houses and mailboxes don’t look the same.

Our feedback suggests it is working; Finnair for example, suggests that their users of our system find it very intuitive and easy-to-use. This has both short and long term benefits to the business. With a solution accepted by the end users and quite self explanatory, roll out can happen to subsidiaries without the need for specific training. And over the longer term, solutions that are also best for purpose within the eProcurement and invoice automation area, lead people more easily on the journey towards the integrated and business efficient EPP process. In summary, a roll out with easy user acceptance enables best practices so everyone does the right things AND in the right order so that the business benefits of the technology are realized!

Juha Hakamies technology