Understanding Pain Points to Build Better Software

You may often hear the Buildable team refer to a company's "pain points", but what does that really mean? A pain point is a moment of frustration for your employees, customers, partners, and/or stakeholders. In simple terms, pain points are problems. They can be as diverse as your software’s user group and experienced daily or less frequently.

Finding pain points has been a common practice among marketing firms for decades. Market researchers work to find and remove barriers to entry (or purchase) in order to increase their clients’ sales. In an analog world, simply providing longer store hours can remove frustration and provide an opportunity for more sales. In a digital environment, perfecting an easy-to-use checkout process with faster load times and simplistic workflows can close sales and keep customers from leaving for competitors’ sites.

Just as storefronts and e-commerce websites can minimize pain points, so can your software. An integral part of delivering the most effective software possible is uncovering all areas for improvement including the discovery and elimination of pain points.

Common pain points alleviated with Buildable software include:

• Decentralized Digital Processes
• Outdated Software Tools
• Analog Workflows that could be Digital
• Sub-Par Reporting Capabilities
• Speed and Performance Issues
• Unresponsive or Underperforming, Incumbent Software Providers

Removing pain points in your software is paramount.

Identifying and removing pain points in your software can result in increased sales, increased ROI, growth in productivity, and increased customer satisfaction and memorability.

• Increase sales by offering a better experience than your competition. In 2019, Userzoom found that 70% of enterprise CEOs see UX (User Experience) as a competitive differentiator, an 18% rise over their 2018 survey.
• Increase ROI with lower support calls and reduced development waste.
• Grow productivity when your software becomes the easy-to-use tool your employees feel supported by.
• Increase customer satisfaction and memorability because customers love when their technology gives them what they want and need.

Buildable listens to create better software.

Pain points are identified in the development phase called “discovery”. Discovery begins the moment we connect and continues throughout the entire development process. Discovery includes the gathering of user stories, documentation, prototyping, and user testing, but most importantly – discovery is listening!

All Buildable projects, large and small, are provided a team of listeners which always includes UX (user experience) professionals. These team members drive the discovery process to ensure your new software transforms frustrations into joy.

Discovery does not need to be expensive to be effective. Measuringu found that 85% of issues related to UX can be detected by performing a usability test on a group of only 5 users. The upfront expense of a discovery Sprint or two can save companies millions. In the book “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach”, author Roger Pressman states that problems in development are 10 times more expensive to fix than during design.

It’s likely that by now you’re already aware of serval pain points in your current operation or software system. To uncover more, listen to your customers and employees. Ask them open-ended questions about their experiences with your company processes. Don’t forget! The most effective way to identify pain points is to listen.

We’re always ready to listen to you - let’s talk. Give us a call at (503) 468-4890 to talk through your company’s pain points.