> The thing is ... very few companies do actually use all the complex configuration of said purchased software.
That's the point, though. Enterprise software is a superset (E) of all features that a large group of very diverse customers need.
An individual customer has a need for a much smaller set of features (C). That enterprise software may very well be the best software that includes all those needed features:
C ⊆ E
There are niche providers, so a logical customer would select the software that meets all of their needs and as little else as possible. But there may not be a niche provider that meets that criteria. So as an individual customer, you may be stuck between an Enterprise software that meets all your needs, but is "more than you need" and a niche software that doesn't meet all your needs.
> That enterprise software may very well be the best software that includes all those needed features.
How come you can't have something nice & even decently working for: pay, HR, vacation, expenses tracking?
Or more, how is it possible that obviously unfit and malfunctioning solutions (for problems that have been known, solved and specified for years) are still on the market in 2019 in companies that pretend to be serious about software?
Pay, HR, and expense tracking are extremely complex areas due to federal / state / local labor laws, collective bargaining agreements, and individual organizational policies. Any application which deals with all those complexities will inevitably be full of defects and usability problems. There is no solution, it's simply reality.
Do the users of the software need to know about all that complexity?
If the answer is: "they definitely do", then you are right. There's no way around it.
If the answer is: "No, they only need to know about 4% of it. The rest can be automated and hidden away." then the problem is that people aren't incentivised to pay the cost of building that software.
There is a broad solution:
Hire engineers, UX designers, and product managers to spend time to solve those problems and to manage that complexity. The problem is that this requires the time and effort of skilled people and that requires a sustained commitment of money. So that requires someone with decision-making power to allocate money from a budget of limited resources.
If the additional UI improvement helps win sufficient revenue, then its worth it. But if the additional UI improvement doesn't persuade decision-makers or only helps 1 client account, then it is not.
In this area of enterprise software, the users absolutely need to know about the complexity for compliance reasons. Any errors can potentially result in criminal charges, civil liability, or at least bad PR and employee morale.
Payroll might seem simple but in reality it's full of complex edge cases. For example, employers sometimes receive court orders requiring them to periodically seize a certain amount from a particular employee's pay in order to satisfy a legal judgment. And in some cases there can actually be multiple such orders that would effectively reduce the employee's take home pay below zero. Now what do you do? Please explain how engineers, UX designers, and product managers can "manage" such complexity.
> Payroll might seem simple but in reality it's full of complex edge cases.
oh I would definitely have assumed so. My question is to what degree does the UI need to lay all that complexity right out for the user and to what degree can it hide it?
If humans inherently need to learn about all that complexity, then the best you can do is make it not-needlessly complicated.
> Please explain how engineers, UX designers, and product managers can "manage" such complexity.
I can't do so in the space of this text box. The answer is practically the field of software engineering.
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I'm curious what your thoughts are on https://docs.gusto.com/ Is it another "yea, this covers 95% of my use cases, but I need that last 5%" Or is it good?
The problem here is putting the cart before the horse and expecting the software to implement policies for you. If you can't design a workflow to work and be compliant without new software, you probably do not know enough about your own workflow to purchase software that will actually improve it.
That's the point, though. Enterprise software is a superset (E) of all features that a large group of very diverse customers need.
An individual customer has a need for a much smaller set of features (C). That enterprise software may very well be the best software that includes all those needed features:
There are niche providers, so a logical customer would select the software that meets all of their needs and as little else as possible. But there may not be a niche provider that meets that criteria. So as an individual customer, you may be stuck between an Enterprise software that meets all your needs, but is "more than you need" and a niche software that doesn't meet all your needs.