Are you too user friendly?
By Evan Wise
Management One®

Computers and technology work to simplify a complicted technical world by making things more and more “user friendly”(UF). The business world, like other aspects of life, has become saturated with technology designed to be 'user friendly(UF).' Often, UF means that the choices have been simplified or eliminated and technology makes the decisions for you. This decreases the need to for expertise or professional judgment. Although there are many benefits to making things UF, like everything there are downsides too. Being aware of the downsides can help you stay ahead of the competition.

I began thinking about this during my early career as a papermaker. When I started, there were no computers and the sensor technology was in its infancy. A machine operator knew the paper was too dry when the hairs on his arm stood up from the static electricity as he walked by the huge reel of paper winding up at the end of the machine. He then went and manually adjusted some pressure control valves to lower the dryer temperature. Once computers came on the scene, all of this became automatic, which seemed to be a good thing. The problem arose when the automatic system failed to operate as it was designed to. The computer was handling all the adjustments and soon the newer operators didn’t know where the manual control valves were. Productivity in the plant was quickly becoming a slave to the new UF process.

You find the trade-offs between user friendliness and manual intervention all the time. Go to a restaurant and a waiter provides user friendly dining compared to a buffet where you get a chance to look at the food, quality and preparation before serving yourself. On your computer things get more and more user friendly all the time. Remember the days of DOS when every entry was manual and you told the computer what to do? The system was reliable and never “crashed”. Today, a PC is user friendly which means there are many programs running in the background automatically. You press a button and you really don’t know what is happening, but you hope it is doing what you want. Sometimes programs or even 'updates' conflict with one another, making our system unstable and prone to crashes. But who knows which programs are the cause, or whether its simply a bug in the program itself? We trade off user friendliness for control.

We approach businesses the same way. Retailers can find Open to Buy planning solutions that are user friendly. It might even be a part of the POS system. You will get a number and you can use that to run your business. Unfortunately, every business is different, every market is different, every vendor mix is different and every staff is different. A UF approach can’t take all of that into consideration so you lose control in order to make the process simple. On the other hand, UF means that the user can spend his valuable time elsewhere and that is important.

At Management One®, we accomplish the best of both worlds by implementing our planning processes (Winning@Retail™) through a team of professional experts in merchandise planning who we call affiliates. We maintain manual control of our process to maintain the highest degree of flexibility and usefulness. The affiliates then review every plan and make the results UF for the retailer. That way the retailer gets the action plan and can spend his time making the plan into reality.

We take the same approach with our Winning@Business™ process. Every client is put through our customized strategic planning process and the steering team learns a management process that is modified to fit the individual company’s team, clients, products and operation. An affiliate trained in the Winning@Business™ process then makes the processes user friendly. The key here is implementation. Processes can be streamlined or automated. Attitudes, motivations, commitments and dedication must be cultivated on a person to person level. There are no shortcuts here. There is no way to make changing attitudes, motivations, commitment and dedication a quick and easy process. It must be implemented carefully and over the long haul. The Management One® affiliate remains dedicated to the success of the business. Many companies have spent a lot of money looking for a shortcut to make this happen quickly. Shortcuts simply do not work.

Everyone wants simplicity but the irony is that simplicity only seems to make our world more complicated. Many owners would like processes that don't require skill on their part. In order to have an effective process, you need to have someone in the loop that understands the process and can 'adjust the knobs' when things don't work as they should. Being able to convert complicated data to simple, actionable goals is what business success is all about. Small business owners must already wear many hats so it's critical that the burden of analysis is not placed too directly on their shoulders. Don’t expect UF to make things simpler. Don’t give up control of your business. Don’t ignore important decisions because you don’t have time, they are too complicated or you don’t understand them. Get the professional help to make the right decisions and watch your business grow.