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... well, just about everything.

Some of you will atready know that HumanEdj went on general release yesterday.  The press release is here and you can listen to a podcast with Elizabeth Book about it here.

This release follows months of beta testing, in a programme that included over a hundred organizations of all sizes, types, sectors, and geographical locations.  I knew from my consulting experience that the software met a need in all sectors, so the variety in the programme was not really a surprise. What was a pleasant surprise was:

• The level of response, since the only invitations to join the beta programme were mentions on this blog
• How many major incumbent software vendors were on the programme.

When I first started writing about Human Interaction Management (HIM), at the start of 2005, there was considerable resistance to the ideas from the software community.  Despite my efforts to explain that HIM is not competitive but complementary to all existing offerings, raising rather than diminishing the value of current software products, many people involved in the software market seem not to have believed this at all.  Rather, they saw the emergence of a "new breed of productivity software" as a threat.  This viewpoint has definitely changed - out of necessity.

We are currently reaching the peak of a hype curve - not only for existing middleware solutions (Business Process Management, Content Management, Business Rule Management, etc) but for the clutch of good-looking new tools known as Web 2.0 (wikis, blogs, AJAX, etc).  How much money are organizations actually making from adoption of any of this?  Very little, I would say.  And saying it, I often feel like the little boy in the story about the Emperor's new clothes - it can't be long before others start to say it too.

When the wave breaks, as it will soon, incumbents providing these products and services will either go under (i.e, watch consumers become disenchanted with the offerings into which so much money has been invested) or surf - by providing their user base with a step-change in how they extract value from such offerings.

Human nature being what it is, it will not be long before the people currently investing in new middleware start to ask how it differentiates them from their competitors - and those still in love with Web 2.0 start to reject reading blogs, editing wikis, and making customized charts in a browser as a waste of time.  To keep these customers, you must offer something more, something that speaks directly to their most immediate need - which is to succeed in whatever it is that they are currently trying to accomplish.

The business person's true needs are not for more information on a Web portal or more features in an ERP suite.  Rather, the business person needs to become more productive, both personally and on behalf of the employer on whose success they depend.  Hence the business person desperately needs a new type of software tools - tools that will help them achieve rather than just "do stuff".

TAKE AWAY

The coming change is actually an opportunity, not a threat, for a supplier of Web portals and ERP suites.  By providing goal-directed collaboration tools that are customized to integrate seamlessly with their existing offerings, such a supplier can show people how to leverage such offerings for direct and immediate advantage, thus increasing both adoption of these offerings and customer satisfaction.

This is why so many software vendors signed up to beta test HumanEdj.  It is a free goal-directed collaboration tool designed from the ground up to support such integration - it can be branded and extended via standard Eclipse plug-ins.  What software vendor wouldn't think it a good idea to offer something based on this to their customers, something that in helping them meet their own business goals incidentally brings them back to the vendor's own fold?

Posted by keithhb in Business Process Management • Internet • Knowledge Management • Management • Office Applications • Service-Orientated Architecture |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us