[d4nt]

Companies have processes and changing those processes is very difficult and risky for the managers involved. A new software provider really needs to fit round the existing processes if it wants to make a sale.

Buying one person, or one team, a tool like Adobe CS doesn’t really change any processes so it’s easy. But dropping a new system in that changes a process and everything changes.

“Helen from risk wants a new fraud detection system” is effectively the same as “Helen wants to review all our fraud detection policies and if anything changes and subsequently goes wrong it won’t just be Helen that gets fired”. There’s a huge pressure on the software provider to make their system support whatever unique, crazy or arcane processes the risk team were previously using, and support all existing interfaces into and out of the risk team, because nobody wants to sign off on any changes. So enterprise software has to be crazy flexible. And flexibility makes for bad UX.