CIOIN

The flux in the economy, coupled with the consumerization of IT is transforming the pace and style of work. In reaction to economic uncertainty, managements are pushing for a quantum increase in business agility, and IT has typically responded with an increasing number of project rollouts—projects characterized by short deadlines, low investment and short ROI windows. At the same time, users are demanding the same level of user-friendliness they get with applications outside the enterprise. 

When these two trends cross paths you get trouble. With less time to get projects right, CIOs must ensure that IT projects are instant hits—or face user ire. This is putting pressure on CIOs. According to CIO research, 60 percent of Indian CIOs say user resistance to new technology is one of the three big challenges they see in 2012. 

At the same time, the increased availability of broadband and smarter devices is leading end-users to expect—nay, to demand—that enterprises offer them the same level of IT service they get outside the office.  “If you look at the Android platform, it is a user-driven customization of how desktop looks and feels. This has led to a positive pressure on enterprise applications; users feel they should be as easy to use, and if not, they should at least have a say in it,” says Vinod Sivarama Krishnan, CIO-Global at Jubilant Life Sciences. 

Until now, users had little or no say in the look or feel of the applications that they worked with. That’s going to change, especially with the average age of users across organizations falling rapidly.

Making Change 

Accenture’s Technology Vision report for 2011 suggests that more consumers will expect natural interfaces that require little learning, and have few or no barriers to use. At Jubilant Life Sciences, Krishnan says this trend has already started.

Jubilant Life Sciences has a disparate intranet application stack for approvals ranging from travel requests to purchase orders. “Users came to us saying they’d like to see all approval requests on one screen and have the ability to select all of them or tick off select requests, radio button style,” says Krishnan. The timing of the request is significant given that Jubilant Life Sciences staffers have been using disparate systems for over 10 years, says Krishnan. “We should’ve seen this coming.”

At Perfetti Van Melle, controller-ICT, Basant Kumar Chaturvedi, has instituted a formal process of collecting user feedback. “Users can choose whether they want radio buttons, or drop down menus, or tabular formats, among others,” he says.  Such feedback is useful in applications that require a high degree of data input, he says.

That information came handy when Chaturvedi wanted to tweak the candy-manufacturer’s dealer management system, which required many fields to be filled. Based on user feedback, Chaturvedi fine-tuned the system to a single file format, markedly reducing the time spent by users accessing the application. 

It’s Not that Hard

Enhancing user experience becomes more critical when you are running a VDI set-up—exactly what Sharat Airani, chief-IT (Systems & Security) at Forbes Marshall Group of Companies has done.  “The biggest fear users have is the loss of ownership,” says Airani. With virtual desktops, users no longer have any personal space, for family pictures and the like. So Airani carved out space on the company’s central servers and dedicated it to employees. “Each user has two logins. With a professional login, they aren’t allowed any personalization. But for everything else they can use the separate login,” says Airani. 

It’s really a small step and not a technological challenge, but it can go a long way in fostering a healthier employee-IT relationship. It also helps build a culture that encourages user participation and trust. 

Accenture’s report recommends that companies start planning for superior user experiences that help to boost customer satisfaction—experiences that don’t cost much to create, that are very engaging, and that are entirely natural, requiring little or no learning.

That’s not very hard to do, says Krishnan. “In our effort to get users more involved in an application, we found that the UI (user interface) is the easiest step to build engagement,” he says. 

During mock-ups, Krishnan has found that involving users in interface design elicits maximum co-operation, excitement, and empathy with the development team. “In terms of technology, this is significantly a minor challenge and easy to do,” he says.

If you’re worried that there will be too many variants, don’t be. “As people customize there comes a point when it all converges into a system that is most functional. Within six months everyone’s pages tend to look the same,” says Krishnan.

Function Over Form 

But CIOs shouldn’t get carried away and let users run amok with customizations. CIOs need to keep in mind that focusing on user experience takes time and effort and its returns are hard to pin down in rupee terms. “If I had an application that everybody in the organization touched I would be careful of how much customization I offered. I think I would have three layouts rather than giving users whatever they wanted,” says Krishnan.

Airani agrees. “User profiles should be created on the basis of their function. You cannot give everyone the same level of flexibility. This approach works best in areas that need significant people involvement and for key users who need that extra flexibility.” 

As more Indian CIOs try to meet the twin imperatives of this year—more agility and increased IT consumerization—it would do them well to take a tip out of Krishnan’s playbook. “You don’t want to be telling people what to do. Let them make the journey on their own.”