I work in software but really I spend most of my days convincing businesses and the people who own/run them to invest in the utilization of software. Notice I didn’t say the investment in software itself. I used to work for software companies where a big part of my job was to sell software. It depressed me. It was relatively easy to convince print businesses that software could potentially improve their business outcomes. It was almost impossible to help printers actually reach that potential under the business model of a software company.

Software companies make money when they sell more software, so generally the business model is not set up to matter whether the customer uses the software or not. As a result, the business incentive is aligned to get the software working just good enough for the customer to keep it. That bummed me out.

It’s such a frustrating state of affairs when a business has invested a lot of money in the “potential” of software, yet they haven’t reached anywhere near the potential they were sold. The customer is frustrated and that frustration is typically directed toward the people at the software vendor. The sales people who sold the software solution based on its highest possible potential (all stars aligned, the printer has perfect employees who fully embrace change, the leadership is engaged and focused, and the business perfectly fits the software’s features, etc.) are long gone and chasing the next sale.