I’m neck deep in my latest design for the call center/customer. It revolves around the concept of enhancing the service notification to be more function AND easier to use. So, I was beginning to look at the selection screen. I could model everything that current SAP transaction does, or I could just do a subset of those that I believe are the most widely used. So this led me to the dilemma of how much is enough to exceed my future customer’s expectations?
I could spend my time adding in every option available, knowing full well that 90% of everyone out there doesn’t use most of them… but then they are available, just in case. Or, I could add in the bare bones, and have to scramble when a customer asks why a particular field isn’t available. So, where do you draw the line. I’m still a sales and marketing novice, so I often have to default to my friends for guidance. First let me tell you what I think… and then I’d love to hear if you have a different opinion…
I used to go down the path of add EVERYTHING. Afterall, I’m already in there doing it, it’s just a little more time, a little more repetition, and a few more entries in my tables. However, I’m realizing that the more time I spend on tedious work like that, the more time I’m NOT spending on the really big pieces that I need to design. For example, this product will have a big enhancement to the way that repair sales orders are generated. It’ll give a company a lot more functionality and flexibility, and make life a lot EASIER for customer service. I could spend my time getting that designed and fully tested… or I could add a few more fields for selection that will likely never be used. So I’m going done path B… because I can always add more fields later. It won’t take much effort, and might actually cut down on some of the extra pieces I add that will never be used.
Thanks for reading,