Simple Software
The simple software revolution is here. That doesn’t mean that software technology isn’t getting better – it simply means that it is becoming more efficient. Today’s software is developed to fix a problem within a specific niche, from hiring and sales to online payment solutions. For today’s cutting edge software, bells and whistles are going out the window. Useless features that are simply there to increase the cost of a product and make it seem a bit more glitzy are no longer fashionable (why were they ever fashionable?). Today, businesses and consumers want software that makes their lives easier.
Google is one huge advocate of software products like these. Although Google Documents doesn’t have all of the features that MS Word has, it is designed to make collaboration and sharing ideas far simpler. Although Gmail doesn’t have all of the features of MS Outlook, it also makes our lives easier with the right features to make collaboration a breeze. As you can see, collaborative features are a central theme to making software simpler.
Why is collaboration necessary with software products? Any business user knows that the end goal of compiling any sort of data is to share that information with the rest of the team and utilize it to accomplish a designated task. If that compiled data sits in a database with no extra eyes on it, it becomes useless. Collaboration means enabling the maximum number of eyes to view this data, take from it and do a better job because of it.
Not only are collaborative features integral to simple software, but analytics features are just as important. Once a team has entered data day in and day out for a designated amount of time, they need to stop and look at the numbers. Any business that walks blindly in one direction without analyzing where they are going is bound to fail. Software analytics allows a business to evolve to the current circumstances and move forward toward a new goal.
One example of a sector that is making great use of simpler software is the world of corporate recruiting. This is an industry where collaboration is king- in order to be the best in acquiring new talent communication between hiring managers and recruiters is integral. Today’s applicant tracking software lives and dies based on the solution’s collaboration and analytics features. A company needs a software package that simply gets the job done, without a bunch of fluff in between.
In conclusion: Simpler is better. Collaboration is King. And Analytics lets us learn from out history. All these phrases sum up cutting edge software that makes our lives easier.