Make your new systems intuitive

For your next system development, make the systems intuitive instead of spending time up-skilling people in potentially high turnover positions. Great customer interaction should be your focus, ahead of designing a system that meets your internal needs for audit and reporting. Too often systems are designed with customer and user needs to be a distant second to the requirement for producing manager’s reports – which the manager may not even need. The design and specification for systems should make your new systems intuitive, instead of needing extensive training.

Without the need for training

Any new computer system that needs intensive training (with some exceptions in highly specialised areas), is immediately disadvantaged when it comes to user adoption and in consistent usage. Uptake can be slow, where the system cannot be rolled-out until full training and change management is completed, and this can also cause some people to have differing opinions and recollections of instruction and training. If your systems are designed to be intuitive, then users will not need to be trained on using the system, instead on how to do their job.

Training on ‘how’ to use the system

Systems that need users to be taught the ‘right’ way to use them are also at risk of users choosing their own path – finding their own way to subvert the system and skip steps or do things more efficiently (or in other cases, re-interpreting requirements to actually add in additional steps or complexity). The approaches such as Design Thinking, and a focus on Customer Experience (CX) needs to be extended in to internal systems, processes and operating methods.

Policy and Process

Instead of training people on how to use a new computer system – you should be teaching them how to do their job, with the computer system as a tool. This means that the emphasis should be on company policy and your chosen process, where the software tool is intuitive.