Technorati: 37Signals

While some of his points are valid I do think he misses the key thing about Basecamp. Simplicity. It’s not SAP. If you want heaps of features then go for something else. You don’t check in to a Best Western and expect the same services as you get at the Four Seasons. We tried using Basecamp internally at 24SevenOffice for a while but abandoned the product as it lacked several critical features such as dependable tasks, date specified tasks and more. So far we haven’t found a decent alternative for our needs and currently we are using the project management module (it was developed with our customers needs in mind – not our own) in 24SevenOffice and Microsoft Excel.

Via my referral log.

Technorati: 37Signals, Basecamp

The latest post from their Signals vs. Noise blog is a collection of customer inquiries. Yes – they posted customer inquiries they did not like on their blog. I do agree with 37Signals that the listed inquiries are somewhat ignorant or just plain stupid to be honest. But first of all you do not publish customer inquiries on your website! Would you contact this company if you knew you could end up on their blog if you ask a (in their mind) a stupid question?

Most of all I think this shows the attitude 37Signals has to product development and their customers. It is not just about simlicity for 37Signals. It is about them and what features they want to spend time on implementing. In marketing this is something that is referred to as the ‘product concept’. This strategy was abandoned in the 1960s. Now we focus on customer needs and we take customer responses seriously into consideration. This is called the ‘marketing concept’.

I think 37Signals products are fine products for businesses who do not need extra features, and they have put the importance of simplicity on the agenda for many other software developers. I do agree that software is often too complex. But that does mean there is a need for many features. 37Signals have good products for a niche in the market. But they forget that the rest of the market has other needs than their simple lists and “feel-good” yellow fading techniques.

Technorati: 37Signals, marketing.

In the face of the new year, here’s a single 37signals’ prediction for 2006:
Enterprise will follow legacy to become a common insult among software creators and users.

Enterprise software vendors’ costs will continue to rise while the quality of their software continues to drop. There will be a revolt by the people who use the software (they want simple, slim, easy to use tools) against the people who buy the software (they want a fat feature list that’s dressed to impress).

This will cause enterprise vendors to begin hemorrhaging customers to simpler, lower cost solutions that do 80% of what their customers really need (the remaining 20% won’t justify the 10x-100x cost of the higher priced enterprise software “solutions”).

By the end of 2006, it will be written that enterprise means bulky, expensive, dated, and golf.

Quoted from: Predicting ‘06: Enterprise is the new legacy

I have a lot of respect for 37Signals and the work they have done. But this statement is a joke. Sure “enterprise” software is expensive, bulky and dated and there is a lot of room for improvement in that segment. But why do you guys attack enterprise software? You guys are in the other end of the market. Enterprise software is about scale and about handling every business need that a large corporation has. I work in a company who develop business software for small and medium sized businesses and even here we see in some cases extensive feature lists. Enterprise software is not about having one feature that does one thing. It is about the ‘what if’s of that feature. Also enterprise software is for users who do not talk together. The information must flow to the right decision maker. A nice wiki with tagging capabilities is not going to do that.

37Signals’ CRM & Project management solutions will work fantastic for small teams and others with little need of specific features. If the main thing is to collaborate, work anywhere without the hassle of installing software and paying hefty license fees then 37Signals products are great. This is a big market. Most companies have the need for more functionality. It is a matter of choice between features, bulky and expensive and cheap, easy and featureless. You guys are just taking on another market. If you do not understand that you will fail. Your target market does not care, need or have the money for enterprise software.

Technorati: 37Signals, ERP.