# The Hidden Economics Behind Enterprise Software Choices #Consulting #Design #Product *Last Updated: June 2024* Enterprise software is rarely implemented out of thin air. It almost always replaces a quagmire of incumbent legacy applications and manual processes. An organization rarely has the internal chops to do "transformation" independently - from fit-gap analysis, vendor selection, change management, contingency planning, cutovers, etc. The role of systems integrators comes into play here - large incumbent technology consultancies who already have a foot in the door for these clients. Mostly, these integrators compete on cost and focus on winning deals through efficiency and value for money. Most such companies build internal vendor-specific practices that double down on optimizing their work for a specific vendor like ServiceNow or Salesforce. Suppose you are a P\L leader at such a systems integrator. In that case, your role has very little incentive to be innovative, research disruptive SaaS, and write up the risk to sell great experience but unproven emerging tools to clients. On the contrary, you can rise the ladder faster by doing big-ticket deals for enterprise software implementations, agnostic of the employee experience of using these tools. Large integrators optimize their operations by enrolling few but large enterprise software companies on their rolls to advise large clients to buy their combination of products and services. The person at the client signing the check is likely the most risk-averse of all players involved. They are tying their career and promotions to the success of such large transformation projects. They likely have the least incentive to reject the recommendations coming through the incumbent integrators and go out of the way to try something new only because the UX is awesome. Is it possible to break this deadlock? It's rare, but yes, and not on account of better UX. Siebel held half the CRM market share in 2022, and Salesforce managed to topple it in a few years (but frankly, there were also self-goals by Siebel) and UX wasn't the reason for that.