expenses is a great example, it needs to accomodate so many different regulations, compliance issues, legacy compatibility needs within an implementation, that it can't be more than a generic shell in vanilla SAP. so you need consultants to set it up in the first place. what do they do? ask the client's project team to tell what they want...and this is why all enterprise software implementations produce shit outcomes. non-software people having a direct say on UI/UX.
sort of like homer simpson designing that car.
Consider internal software - there is literally no disconnect whatsoever, but very often the software is terrible. This is relevant because it raises the issue that the business simply may not care about quality, and thus putting in the work required to make the thing good might simply not be possible.
There are many, many factors involved in determining whether software sucks or not, and key is the understanding or lack thereof of what the users want and need, agreed. But keep in mind, there is a big difference between seeing what the users' need superficially vs. understanding clearly and deeply what the users' need and implementing it well.
For internal projects, investment is obviously a huge problem, and once you've built the wrong thing you're unlikely to get more money to do it right. But for a given price point, there's a huge range of quality you can obtain. Paper protoyping helps you maximize that at very low expense.
we also used a ticket tracking packages called, I think, CAMS. possibly a CA product. oh, and we used Harvest for source control. I still recall the joy in learning CAMS would be replaced, and the horror that followed as we came to grips with ManageNow. Never dreamt I'd wish for CAMS to return, but I did.
So, yes, I agree. I can't believe the companies that peddle this crap actually use it.
Anyone from SAP care to chime in?