Workflow Blog

It has been a few weeks since my last blog and reason why is that we have just finished implementing the first of a few applications for one of the four major banks here in Australia.  The interesting thing about this project was not the hours spent creating working workflow applications, but the weeks making things look pretty.  Or in some cases not that pretty but to customer specifications.  As a techie I am still struck by how most users would much rather have something semi-functional that looks pretty as opposed to something that actually works.  I think in the end adopting a workflow system is not a rational decision based on return on investment but rather still an emotional decision. 

While the workflow industry is still in growth there is relatively little head to head competition.  However as more and more companies start competing head to head it will not be the feature set that customers will look at in making decisions.  It will not be support.  It will just be, is it pretty to look at and easy to use.  I am not sure any analysis by Garter et al really comes close to capturing this information.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been including more and more AJAX functionality into our product.  AJAX is quite cool.  It really does enhance the user experience.  It is my personal opinion (I am not speaking for Web and Flo here) that of all the things that people are developing for workflow systems not enough is being done to give users a truly pleasurable experience.  OK pleasurable may not be to strong a word.  I think alot of effort these days is going into modelling and simulation.  Which is alot of use for the tiny percentage of workflow system users who happen to be designing and modelling such high throughput processes that it is really important.  For the vast majority they could not care less.  I believe that many workflow vendors are spending alot of time creating these simulation tools because of the ability to market them not for the actual use to clients.  I guess it may be easier to sell a workflow system that has simulation that you will never use as opposed to one that does not but is easier to use.  Maybe it is just to much selling the sizzle.

PS I may be biased as the companies we deal with are generally smaller.

PSS Also this is just my gut feel and I do not base my assumptions on any hard scientific data.

Please post a comment if you disagree.