Enterprise Software Lesson from SAP

At age 26, I was probably one of the youngest Product Owners at SAP

I remember during my initial months. I was so excited to show our enterprise clients a "brilliant" new feature design we were working on.

Clean interface. Minimal clicks. Very startup-ish.

But our clients hated it.

One client actually said, "Where are all my buttons? I can't see what this thing is doing."

What I learned in correcting it completely changed how I think about software.

The biggest lesson i learnt was Enterprise software is not about user experience. It's about "user confidence". When someone's job depends on your software working exactly the same way every Tuesday at 9 AM, innovation is risky thing.

These people run million-dollar processes on our software. What we call Innovation feels like risk to them.

Most product managers learn this after their enterprise deals fall apart.

Your enterprise customers aren't asking for magic. They're asking for certainty.

Give them that, and they'll pay enterprise prices for it.