Enough is Enough

On September 24, 2009, Al Lencioni of ASA Sales Systems spoke at out lunch meeting about when “Enough is Enough” in information technology and in the products and services that we offer at our businesses. The cornerstone quote for Al’s comments was Leonardo DaVinci’s “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, from nearly 500 years ago.

Al used DaVinci’s quote to make the point that the unfortunate emphasis today is on adding feature after feature to existing products in order to differentiate those products. The result of this trend is that a device often becomes so complicated that it looses its functionality to the everyday consumer. Devices become “functionally useless” as the features that you really need become buried in the many features that you don’t need or want. Research shows that 80% of the buyers can only use 20% of the features in a device.

An excellent example of this trend is a cell phone. A cell phone is now so advanced that it can communicate in multiple ways, take photos and movies, access the internet and perform numerous other tasks. But, most people only utilize 20% of a cell phone’s features, and many have no idea of all the tasks that a typical cell phone could perform.

However, certain manufacturers are attempting to give consumers exactly, and only, what they want. Pure Digital Technology now sells the Flip Ultra, which is a camcorder that records video and plays the recorded video, but not much more. The settings and adjustments are minimal and the device has very few buttons. Not surprisingly, the Flip Ultra now has 17% of the camcorder market.

The same problem occurs in the sale of customer relationship management (“CRM”) software (the industry in which Al Lencioni is involved). The industry suffers from an 80% failure rate in implementation of CRM software. Why? Because of the complexity of the products. Now that CRM companies have realized that CRM tools do not make life easier and implementation often fails, they are retreating to a simpler model that focuses on the core 20% of uses that people desire. The result has been an increase in implementation success and business success. Al encouraged us to differentiate ourselves by becoming “best of breed” in our core products and services, rather than too often expanding our offering in order differentiate ourselves.