The industry used to be dominated by large muscular corporations. They had complete control of both their brands and their distribution. They had massive amounts of cash to spend on sales and marketing. They built franchises from which it was very difficult to escape. And they were selling to a central IT department who worried more about risk and functionality than what it was actually like to use the product. The term UX didn't even exist. Not anymore.

We are well and truly in the age of the lovable product in enterprise. This is a profound shift and I believe it has been driven by the convergence of a number of factors as follows:

Consumerization of IT

The tech that we use and love at home is now being used in the office or is driving very different expectations in the products that we use to do our work.

De-centralization of decision making

No longer is a central IT department carrying the budget and making the decisions on behalf of the entire organization. Tech has become increasingly important to every department in the company and this is empowering teams to take more control over the products they use.

Mobile devices

Mobile devices with smaller screens controlled by our touch mean that we now have a closer emotional bond to the applications we are using. And the smaller screen places a greater premium on simple, intuitive design.

Switchability

Enterprise software used to be about a big upfront investment and a long-term commitment to both the software and the platform. Most of the tools we now use at work are platform agnostic and you can try for free or sign up on a monthly basis. In this way, business users can easily change their products when they don't live up to ever-increasing expectations.

The customer is in charge

Through sheer marketing muscle enterprise software companies used to be able to control their 'truth.' These days the user is in control. We can voice our dissatisfaction and review products to vast audiences through an ever-growing array of channels.

Viral growth

Most of the most successful enterprise SaaS companies have been propelled by viral growth. This is usually driven 'bottom-up' through a free or low-cost version of the product used by a few rogue users in an organization. It then ripples out across the organization and into others in the same way. Only products that people love will take advantage of this.

Anyone of these drivers is significant in themselves. When you combine them together, you start to understand how such a dramatic shift from the muscular to the lovable, could have happened too quickly in enterprise software.

And it's not just what the product does but how easy it is to use and how it makes us feel that's important. The overall user experience has become even more important than the functionality.

I believe that this is a trend that will run and run. And a trend that any B2B start-up needs to embrace if they are to be successful and take advantage of this fast-changing environment.

Posted by Jos White, Partner at Notion

This blog was first published on www.joswhite.com and the original article can be found here.