John Berman of ABCNews offers up his Atari 2600 as a replacement for the company’s expense reporting system in this humorous video.
The video is clearly a rant with a tongue-in-cheek twist, but during the course of the video he does mention some metrics.
And you know how we love metrics.
Given Mr. Berman’s assertion that 1 receipt takes 3 minutes and his average business trip has 10-20 receipts, he can spend one to two hours entering receipts.
That’s at least one hour of lost productivity per business trip per employee.
Since we all know that time equates to money, entering an expense is an expense over and above the travel costs employees are entering into the system.
In other words, it’s money down the drain.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
Sadly, ABC is not alone.
Generally, the bar for usability design in internal applications is much lower than external applications.
It’s easy to understand why. Out on the internet, your site has to compete with others and external users have no problems critiquing your site with honest (aka harsh) feedback.
On the intranet, it’s a different story. You have a captive audience and employees will hold back their criticisms either out of politeness or fear of reprisals.
Plus, external customers bring in money, internal users cost the company money.
Since we all love to get money, users are lined up accordingly.
I would say that businesses ignore their internal user base at their own peril.
It’s Still a Usability Crime Even If You Don’t Get Caught
Companies pay their employees to get work done. Unless you work in an hourglass factory, staring at hourglasses all day probably isn’t in the job description.
Productivity lost is money lost and, make no mistake, having a behind-the-firewall application that’s frustrating to use will cost you money.
Just because the world can’t see your app, doesn’t mean you get a free pass on usability concerns.
I’m not suggesting that internal applications have dancing logos, rounded “Web 2.0” buttons, or all the other trappings of the “big budget” web sites.
Most users want to get their work done, not admire your artwork or “mad skillz” at technologies they don’t know or care to know about.
Always remember that users use your application as a means to an end and your job as developers is make your application as seamless as possible.