Where's My UI?
The title of a recent article on the The Future of the Enterprise User Interface by AMR's Jim Murphy caught my attention. In it, he claims that the user interface (UI) will evolve into a pervasive layer for user interaction in the next five years, extending established enterprise systems to users in their work environments - wherever they happen to be and that it will be an intrinsic part of every company's architecture while allowing end users a persistent, consistent, and personalized means of accessing, contributing, and delivering information across internal and external sources; structured and unstructured systems; and business, personal, and community services.
He then goes on to characterize the new UI, which will be:
- Rich
graphically intuitive - Pervasive
consistent, reliable, secure access - Continuous
users will be able to switch between access points and pick up where they left off - Contextual
information and services will be presented based on context - Personalized
users will have their own portals to publish and consume content and services - An Extension of Identity
users will be able to establish a holistic sense of identity - Interface-Free
interface tools will expand - Information Intelligent
users will be able to use their native language to ask questions and get answers
Which is not only where interfaces are heading, but where they are today!
- Microsoft is trying to do with Vista what Apple has been doing with the Mac OS X for years, and make interfaces usable
- Most on-demand applications now provide a consistent, reliable, and secure service whose availability is only limited by availability of the underlying connection
- Some leading on-demand applications and portals are including contextual sensitivity that remembers where the user was and returns the user to that point the next time she logs in
- Some portals now push content based upon where the user is in the workflow
- A host of free and low-cost platforms now exist on the web for users to publish and consume content and services
- Leading web-sites now allow users to establish their own identify
- Interface tools are expanding daily. Creating a web page is now child's play. Back in the day, it was a monumental programming task.
- Researchers are making tremendous progress in natural language interfaces.
In other words, although the title caught my eye, the article itself left something to be desired. In five years, the UI should progress well beyond where it is today. Now, I should point out that the article was focussed on the enterprise UI, and it is a fact that traditionally enterprise applications have significantly trailed consumer applications in user interface advancements, but with the recent surge in on-demand applications and the current push by many leading companies to move to web 2.0 "community" applications, I am of the belief that any software company that waits five years to upgrade its UI to these capabilities will not be around in five years. The new workforce is much more technically competent and used to a "networked" world. I don't think they'll wait five years for you to catch up. So, although I agree that the enterprise of the future will be rich, pervasive, continuous, contextual, personalized, an extension of identify, interface-free, and information intelligent, I believe that future will come much sooner than Mr. Murphy seems to imply.
What you are referring to is the emergence of the Meta Enterprise or Metaprise.
A Metaprise which is a dynamic private hub will enable stakeholders (note plural) both within and external to the centralized buying organization to simultaneously interact on a real-time, real-world basis.
The difficulty most traditional software vendors have is that their applications are built on a sequential versus synchronous platform and as such are attempting to bridge these gaps with the loose coupling (note Service Oriented Architectures) of other sequentially-based applications.
Given their sizeable investment in the current sequential architecture, it is very unlikely that software giants such as Oracle or SAP will quickly embrace the necessity of developing meta-enterprise applications. (Hence the reason that 75% to 85% of all e-procurement initiatives fail to achieve the expected results.)
This innovative breakthrough will likely be driven by the smaller, more technically limber organizations whose stake in the current technology and methodologies is not so deeply entrenched. Think Discontinuous Innovation! Until the true definition of dynamic e-procurement is redefined across the broader market (which is beginning to happen due to the aforementioned failure rate) you are likely to see the time lag being proffered by Mr. Murphy continue to persist.
With regard to UI: you can dress up the pig, but it's still a pig. Our space is a long way functionally from where it needs to be, and e-sourcing and e-procurement vendors need to get off their collective duffs and invest seriously in R&D, rather than riding 6- and 7-figure pay checks to mediocrity. Some products haven't changed fundamentally in years, just an occasional UI enhancement.
As Mr. Hanson points out (indirectly), making a procurement clerk more efficient doesn't save money, and systems which base their value proposition on such efficiencies fail to deliver on expectations. It's real savings and real analysis that counts.