Aug 8, 2018
Mobile phone apps ruined everything. As a result of minimal
processing power and small screen size, mobile app developers had
little choice but to keep things basic. Given that mobile devices
are used by everyone on the planet, including a lot of people who
are not particularly smart, mobile apps also had to be "simple".
Now everybody thinks that everything should be as simple to use as
a mobile phone app.
Simple = Simple?
What may seem simple to a hard-core coder, does not seem simple to
me. What may seem simple to me, may not seem simple to you. What
may seem simple to you, may not seem simple to your Mom. So
"Simple" does not equal "Simple". The dictionary defines
simple as "
easily understood or done; presenting no
difficulty", but again... for who? I think of it as the
"
Simple Continuum", with the coder on one end, and your
Mom on the other. The rest of us fall somewhere on this continuum.
Simple vs. Powerful
Simple and Powerful are in an ongoing tug-of-war in every part of
our lives, but since I write about Business Applications, I'll
narrow the conversation here. In looking across the business
applications landscape, most providers have chosen a path. They are
either Simple, or Powerful. Those that claim to be both, are
usually neither. Microsoft has clearly chosen the "Powerful" path
for Business Applications, which makes sense for their Enterprise
customer focus, and their competitive targets. But they do make
some "Simple" claims here and there.
Microsoft's Simple
One area where Microsoft is staking a "Simple" claim is with Canvas
Based PowerApps. Many of us have seen Microsoft's Ryan Cunningham
dazzle us with his ability to build a complete Canvas App in
minutes on stage. It's actually either real, or an illusion of
simplicity, depending on where you fall on the "Simple Continuum".
What I have found interesting about Canvas apps is, that it appears
that having too much knowledge is actually a handicap. The
hard-core coder will take three times as long, to build an app that
is not even as good, as what a novice can do. My guess is that they
over-think it.
What is Powerful?
Powerful is another loaded term, that means different things to
different people. Clearly, there is no question that the Dynamics
365 First-Party apps like Enterprise Sales, Customer Service, PSA
etc. are Powerful applications. These applications have the power
to solve extremely complex business scenarios, for even the largest
customers in the world. But what about companies, of any size,
whose needs are not particularly complex? For them, Powerful might
be defined differently, they might consider the ability to create a
Project in a few minutes to be quite "Powerful". In fact, the
number one reason companies with less complicated needs often
suffer with Business Applications is that they are offered "too
much" Power. More power than they need, more power than they can
understand, more power than they can adopt. This is particularly
acute with companies that are new to Business Applications. It is
also not specific to Microsoft, many customers of Salesforce.com,
and any Enterprise Business Applications vendor, struggle with this
same issue.
Our Choice?
In designing our
RapidStart
CRM application, we wanted to walk the line of Simple, yet
Powerful. This was no easy task, and it required us to first define
our ideal customer. In our case, it was a customer who did not have
complex needs, and defined Powerful differently. It could also be a
customer who had the potential for complexity, but wanted to start
simple, and work their way into it. So our Power would come from
our Simplicity. Fortunately, the only other Business Applications
out there that one might consider simple, are dead-end products
that would require migration once outgrown, whereas RapidStart CRM
can simply be upgraded to the Dynamics 365 First-party apps at any
time. But let's circle back to this idea of "Simple", and how you
get there.
Less is More or Less
Fortunately for us, RapidStart has a strong brand, both inside and
outside of Microsoft. When we undertook to re-imagine RapidStart on
the Power Platform as RapidStart CRM, we had a significant
head-start. We also had the benefit of hundreds of past deployments
of our original model, to really understand what our ideal customer
was looking for. The biggest issues were, adding more features, and
making it even simpler to use. Again, this presented a conundrum,
adding features increases complexity, which is the natural enemy of
simplicity. We opted to further simplify our sales capabilities,
while adding Case Management and Project Management to our new
application. To insure we were meeting our goal of "Simple", we
enlisted the help of... Pat.
What About Pat?
Pat, is a fictional persona that we created. Pat is an intelligent
person, who knows their business, but is not particularly tech
savvy. Pat might be the owner of a small business, or a division
manager of a large business. Pat just wants the team to be
successful, whether the team is sales, service or project
management, or a combination of all of them. Pat is looking for
something simple, but with the kind of power Pat needs. Pat has
neither the time, budget nor patience for anything "Complex". Over
time, internally we got a pretty good idea of who Pat is, and we
actually became friends. We never did figure out if Pat was a male
or a female. Whenever anyone on our team came up with a new idea,
we would ask: "Could Pat do it?". It is amazing how many things Pat
either can or can't, or will or won't, do. In a way, you could say
that Pat built RapidStart CRM, but I'm still taking full credit for
it.
Beyond the Application
Building a Simple to use, but Powerful application for our Ideal
customer was huge amount of effort, but it was only one part
of the effort. For aspiring ISVs, there are a few more things that
you will need to do to succeed, some of these are complex, but the
customer-facing parts still need to be simple. For example, you
need to build a commerce engine for people to buy your application.
On the backend. connecting to payment processors,
auto-provisioning, subscription management, etc, are all complex
things, but on the front end, it needs to be simple enough for Pat
to buy your damn product. While Marketing campaigns can be costly
and complex to design and run, they may ultimately drive traffic to
a website that has to be clear and simple enough for Pat to
understand. Without knowing in advance exactly where Pat will fall
on the Simple Continuum, you will need to be able to provide
varying levels of support and training. For all of these, and many
other things I did not get into, I suggest you create your own
Pat... then just run everything by him, er, or her.