Why Enterprise Software Needs to Be as Easy as it is Powerful

Much of last week’s TwilioCon conference focused on the virtues of prioritizing customer experience. Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson told the audience of developers, “You’re focused on the user instead of the scaffolding,” before interviewing Box CEO & co-founder Aaron Levie, who declared that simplicity was the key to his company’s success.

Like Gmail before it, Box has surprised many with its inroads into the corporate workplace. Enterprise companies have traditionally wanted powerful, robust solutions that would satisfy a broad array of users across their company, and they were willing to pay sizable configuration and training prices to get them. Complexity and hardware requirements weren’t seen as obstacles to adoption, since such companies had well-staffed IT departments and a healthy appetite for owning hardware.

Box CEO & Founder Aaron Levie

Everything about that has changed. A recent Gartner study showed that 62% of marketing departments have total control over the purchase and management of the technology they use, a stunning achievement that is made possible through the availability of powerful cloud-based software. But the bigger driver may be the consumerization of IT. Note that Box began as a mass-market solution and rolled out its enterprise offerings only after  individuals within companies began to using it. Companies such as Evernote, who will soon release its business solution, are following suit.

So what do Gmail, Evernote and Box have in common? They are all powerful solutions with a simple, intuitive interface. With  virtually no learning curve, these free products built passionate throngs of customers that gradually ushered them into the corporate culture.

Here at Revenue.io we’re following the same path. Our iPad app, Revenue.io Free for Salesforce.com, makes it simple for customers to use their favorite CRM on their favorite device. With a single tap, customers can view a contact’s sales & social history, make phone calls to contacts, and qualify leads. And thanks to our powerful Salesforce automation features, our customers can avoid manually logging call activity, notes and other data into their CRM. To further reduce friction, users simply log in with their regular Salesforce.com credentials. Just over the horizon, our premium features will bring additional contextually relevant data to the mobile CRM experience to give reps a competitive advantage in real time.

Elegant solutions that disrupt outdated business models are what started the consumerization of IT, and that’s what will keep driving it.

2020 update: This post contains legacy content regarding Revenue.io features. For the most recent up-to-date information about Revenue.io, please check out our amazing solutions at www.revenue.io