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Employees may judge a new workplace system against the consumer apps they use every day—not just against the older workplace tool it replaced. That shift helps explain why a system can be technically competent yet still feel frustrating: people notice the effort between deciding to do something and getting it done.
Why the old system is no longer the only benchmark
When an organization replaces workplace software, it is natural to ask whether the new system is better than the old one. But employees also bring expectations shaped by familiar tools outside work: a banking app, a supermarket account that remembers a payment card, or a phone that can read a receipt and fill in its date.
In an essay on DEV Community, Serguey Shinder describes an organization replacing its expense system in 2024. He characterizes the former system as “genuinely awful” and its replacement as “competent,” yet says satisfaction barely changed. Shinder reports speaking with fifteen managers to understand why. In his account, they did not compare the replacement with the old expense system; they compared it with consumer software and phone capabilities they already knew. The essay does not provide the satisfaction scores or interview methods, so this is an account of one organization, not evidence that all employees judge software this way. Read Shinder’s essay on DEV Community.
Why feature lists and demos can miss the problem
A feature checklist can show what a product is capable of. A polished demonstration can show that a workflow works under presentation conditions. Neither necessarily reveals how much effort an employee faces during an ordinary task.
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Shinder’s point is that users experience the steps between wanting something and completing it. That is especially important for infrequent tasks: a manager who files an expense only occasionally may not develop fluency with a clumsy workflow, even if the system offers all the required functions. Counting features alone can leave buyers unable to see where time, repetition, or unnecessary data entry frustrates users.
What everyday usability looks like
Shinder gives the example of a depot supervisor asking why she has to type a figure she has just photographed. The example captures a mismatch between an employee’s expectation—based on what a phone can do—and what the internal system asks her to do. See the expense-entry example.
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Not every workflow needs sophisticated automation to feel easier. Shinder also points to prefilled fields and sensible defaults: small design choices that can avoid asking staff to enter or select information the system already knows or can reasonably anticipate. The relevant question is whether a feature removes work from a real task, not whether it sounds impressive in a product presentation.
How to evaluate a shortlisted workplace system
Shinder proposes testing the ten most common tasks with the staff who will actually perform them, timing completion, and publishing those times alongside the price. This is a suggested procurement practice, not a method shown by the essay to outperform other evaluation approaches.
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- Choose common tasks. Identify the ten workflows employees perform most often, such as submitting an expense, and define what counts as completing each one.
- Use actual staff. Ask people who will use the system to perform the tasks on each shortlisted product rather than relying only on procurement staff or a vendor-led demonstration.
- Observe the workflow. Record completion time and note where people must repeat work, enter information already available elsewhere, or struggle to find the next action.
- Show results with price. Present the task-trial results alongside cost so decision-makers can consider effort as well as purchase price.
- Investigate demo-to-task gaps. If a product looks smooth in a presentation but performs poorly in a real-user trial, treat that difference as a procurement concern and ask whether the workflow can be improved.
These trials can make otherwise hidden friction visible before a decision is made. They do not, by themselves, establish how a product will perform for every employee or in every situation; task choice and the people involved matter.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What this account can—and cannot—establish
Shinder’s essay offers a useful way to think about workplace software evaluation, grounded in his account of a replacement expense system and conversations with fifteen managers. It does not publish numerical satisfaction results, a sampling method, interview records, or a controlled comparison. The account therefore illustrates a possible gap between feature-based purchasing and daily usability; it does not measure how common that gap is across organizations.
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