Mads Viktor talks about Peakon’s journey from addressing their startup peers to serving enterprises. When they got their first enterprise client, they built the product around their requirements and they found out that some of the startup mythology didn’t apply to enterprise software acquisition.
A minimum viable product? Well, if it doesn’t deliver on the key parameters for the enterprise, they don’t buy it. That’s a full-stop.
Another thing. When your product is used by hundreds of people in large organizations, there’s a limit to the frequency of how often and how much should you change your product—even though you may feel it’s very important to get your latest inventions into the hands of your users to demonstrate your progress and stay ahead of the competition.
The enterprise bought your product because it solves an important task and spent time getting people to use it. Every time you change the product, the users have to dedicate time to get familiar with the new features. A solution to accommodate fast development without destroying your UX is to release new functionality in an “app store.” Then the customer can add new stuff when they’re ready for it. Another solution is to release and test functionality to a selected group of users.
Viktor recommends only one or two major updates every year to keep all users on board. That’s the “turtle approach,” also used by EasyPractice. And then, stay true to your product vision, so you have a guiding principle for removing all that junk you eventually tend to add to your product because someone requested it.
The machine-vs-humans-thing? Viktor says: “Data only tell what people do, not why they do it.” So, find out what’s behind the lack of usage before you tweak a specific piece of functionality.