Originally appeared in MSI Magazine
October 1, 2000

Is the Web Just Another Pretty Interface?

By now it’s become a truism that the web lowers the bar when it comes to making computers easy. What’s simpler than an HTML page? Five years ago, FedEx proved that the new medium’s simplicity could be tapped with powerful results. It built a simple web page which asked the user a simple question and provided a simple answer. The result—FedEx’s on-line shipment tracking page—set the customer service benchmark for e-businesses, not to mention its rivals in the shipping business.

The obvious question facing application designers is whether the web could work similar wonders with enterprise systems. By embracing a web-based application design, could existing users be served more effectively? Could enterprise systems now be extended to new constituencies? And, by making enterprise systems ubiquitous, could they further increase value or productivity in unforeseen new ways?

In its early phases, the web was viewed as a great information disseminator. The first Intranet applications tended to be HR-oriented, offering access to benefits, 401(k) statements, and staff phone books. These applications were no-brainers because the information was readily available, clearly understandable, and very useful to a wide audience. The success of HR Intranets have prompted some firms to fully eliminate paper for internal communications.

Recently, Oracle and PeopleSoft have each touted their new web-based ERP systems. However, their early efforts have largely amounted to screen-scrapes, translating the same Windows screens into Java applet or HTML visual metaphors, respectively. None of the workflows or content of their applications have changed. Admittedly, PeopleSoft’s idea, though later than Oracle, was probably better thought out since HTML is far more portable than Java applets.

But the reach of the web offers new possibilities beyond zero-deployment browser applications. For instance, e-Procurement vendors such as Ariba and Commerce One, and collaborative planning vendors like Extricity, have shown that the web’s connectivity and reach can unlock new sources of productivity and value.

Another clue to the web’s potential for enterprise applications can be taken from the long-neglected help desk. Traditional help desk system providers, such as Remedy or Peregrine, took the screen-scrape route, adding some FedEx-like incident reporting and tracking web pages, and in isolated cases, placing raw documentation on-line. However, these approaches illustrated, not only the limits of screen scrapes, but the drawbacks of using web pages to blindly disseminate information. In other words, the latter day equivalent of “garbage in, garbage out.”

Web developers have learned the hard way about the importance of content, a lesson that could just as well apply to enterprise applications. In this case, placing tech manuals on-line would only serve technically savvy users who probably wouldn’t have called the help desk anyway. Even if the manuals were translated to plain English and equipped with search engines, most users would probably not figure out why their system is giving them a weird out of memory alarm.

Instead, new generation providers, like Support.com, are exploiting the web as an active medium that is highly connected. For instance, they are offering software agents that decipher the configuration of a hard drive or CPU, monitor the machine’s operating status, and dispatch self-healing software patches automatically. To the user, it’s not an application, but a service that keeps his or her computer going—and all without pushing the user to a web page or a phone call.

The ERP folks could steal a page from the support.com’s or the Extricity’s. While some transactions,, like processing an account payable, may never change, other processes could benefit from creatively tapping the web’s wide connections. In a few cases, PeopleSoft 8 breaks the mold, integrating its own e procurement functionality instead of relying on Commerce One’s, but there are further possibilities in collaborative planning, logistics tracking, customer care, and other processes that could stand some web rethinking.

Admittedly, given the magnitude of the task of porting any large application, getting more than screen scrapes from your enterprise systems vendor may take some time. Although that might be fine for organizations that grew fatigued by the endless reengineering that brought them ERP in the first place, in the age of Internet commerce, FedEx-style innovations can’t come fast enough.