Usability and User Experience Matter in Enterprise 2.0 Apps
Welcome to the fifth in a series of Friday's Features showcasing the latest and greatest in enterprise apps usability. Many ERP software vendors including Epicor, Eshbel, IFS, Infor, Lawson, Microsoft Dynamics, and Syspro have made significant progress in improving usability as they progress to Enterprise 2.0 apps. As mentioned in a December 29th, 2008 post, customer expectations for Enterprise 2.0 apps include users rich user experiences, actionable insight, and business process orientation. The impact of overall user experience and user interaction often tie back to seven key Enterprise 2.0 characteristics:

1. Richer user experiences - role based scenarios across various usability paradigms
2. Business process orientation - support for end to end business processes
3. Configurable change - designing with flexible models and rules instead of customizations
4. Actionable insight - pulling all the key information to make a decision in the context of business process and user role
5. Collaboration - providing secure private interactions and open and innovative connection with stakeholders
6. Intelligent response - responding to contextual models and business events
7. Hybrid deployment - deploying all models from on-premise, hosted, instance virtualization, multi-tenant SaaS, and cloud based BPO.

Part 5: Eshbel Technologies Leaps Ahead With Intuitive Usabilty and Workflow

Israeli based Eshbel Technologies delivers an update to its venerable Priority ERP product line.  Priority has served over 3000 customers in the past 20 years.  Built on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 35 tools and the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF), Priority 13 WPF designs with many user roles in mind and delivers actionable insight from the beginning.  The unique UI/UE provides a competitive differentiator in the highly competitive SMB ERP market.  Key to the success of the product includes the deliver of many Enterprise 2.0 aspects such as:

1. Richer user experiences - users gain a cockpit like access to key information and navigation.  Innovative layout can be personalized with configuration and takes advantage of the latest Microsoft .NET capabilties.
2. Business process orientation - embedded in the core product, Eshbel includes a rich business process modeling tool that gives end users the capability to modify workflows without expensive customizations.
3. Configurable change - most personalizations and modifications can be configured without expensive programming.
4. Actionable insight - Reports generated via drag and drop without intricate coding knowledge.  User dashboard provide key visualization paradigms.
5. Collaboration - leveraging WPF, Priority improves its synchronization with Office apps and most importatnly outlook.
6. Intelligent response - easy to configure rich BPM modeler enables end users to set triggers and thresholds for key workflows and processes.
7. Hybrid deployment -  users will find support for multiple deployment options such as on-premise, on-premise and web enabled, or hosted.

Software Insiders Point of View Photo Stream (click image for details)

(Source: Eshbel Technologies)

Your POV.
Do you like how your apps UI currently look? Will user experience lead to cost savings for you? Is this enough to make you want to switch? What do you think of Eshbel's approach to usability and workflow? Post your thoughts or send me a private email to rwang0 at gmail dot com .

Friday's Feature: Snapshots in Enterprise 2.0 UX/UI

1. Epicor 9
2. Eshbel Priority 13
3. IFS Applications 7.5
4. Lawson SmartOffice 9.0x
5. Microsoft Dynamics AX and NAV

Next Friday's Feature
We currently have openings for the next Friday's Feature on UI. Send a proposal to rwang0 at gmail dot com

Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.