Knoa Software and Electronic Ink Launch User-Centered Design Initiative

NEW YORK--Knoa® Software, the leading provider of end-user experience and performance management software, today announced an alliance with Electronic Ink®, a design consultancy dedicated to improving the way people interact with technology, environments and one another. The User-Centered Design Initiative, created from this alliance, will enable Global 1000 customers to leverage end-user experience metrics and user-centric design to increase return on investment (ROI) and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of their enterprise applications.

Enterprise software, such as ERP and CRM systems are too often monolithic and cumbersome to use and manage. Since these systems are considered mission-critical, organizations invest heavily – in process design, user training and application development – to optimize the use of these complex systems. However, results are still hard to come by, and the problem is widespread. According to Gartner Inc., “Within the enterprise, users are captive audiences of applications mandated by policy and for which there is no free-market competition. The experience of these captive applications is so dismal that users would be satisfied by an experience that is mediocre, because that would represent a positive step over confusing and user-hostile interfaces. Many enterprises are oblivious to the drain in productivity that results from flawed user interface designs.” ^[1]

In addition to hampering adoption and effective process execution, studies have proven that bad user experience can cause a measurable business impact in the form of increased IT costs. Knoa’s customers report that 45 percent of end-user calls to the help desk are related to issues with quality of end-user experience.

These are the specific challenges the initiative addresses.

Knoa’s end-user management solutions provide total monitoring coverage of end-user experience and user behavior across the spectrum of enterprise applications. The award-winning software product monitors application execution from the perspective of the end-user, and provides precise metrics about the end-user experience as well as measurements on how effectively people execute when using enterprise applications.

Electronic Ink, a world class organization specializing in user interface and user experience design helps organizations develop approachable and usable enterprise-wide systems development platforms that overcome the challenges of user adoption and acceptance.

Together, the two companies have created a successful strategy for user-centric design and are able to provide customers:

• Discovery: Accurate comprehensive profiling of end-user experience to pinpoint issues
• Design: End-to-end user centric design services
• Measurement: End-user experience monitoring, analytics and alerting
• Sustainability: Usability center of excellence

“Most user-centric improvement initiatives are hampered, from inception, by insufficient visibility into the real impact of the software design on end-user experience and performance. Significant effort is invested to identify real issues, with techniques including surveys, on-the-job observation, and analysis of reported problems. Unfortunately, these techniques, in addition to being costly, are still sampling techniques and unlikely to pinpoint the most critical issues,” said David Rode, president and chief operating officer, Electronic Ink. “Knoa’s Experience and Performance Management (EPM) software eliminates these inconclusive manual efforts by providing a complete set of metrics about end-user experience and behavior – from all users, and all transactions, all the time. These comprehensive end-user metrics will highlight exactly where end-user execution can be enhanced through user-centered design.”

“Electronic Ink has an impressive track record in helping their customers leverage a strong technology foundation with user-centric design that balances business goals, industry-specific knowledge and an understanding of the end-user,” said Lori Wizdo, vice president, Knoa Software. “Our two offerings go hand-in-hand to provide the best in user-centric design and will enable our joint customers to optimize the usage of their mission-critical applications.

“End-to-end user-centric design, sustained through actionable insight into actual end-user experience and performance, helps organizations determine what works, what doesn’t and develop a strategy to get the most out of their mission-critical applications,” continued Wizdo. “User-centric design helps to lower costs for application management, training and support while effective user-centric design also impacts the top line by allowing organizations to manage end-user performance for efficient, effective and compliant process execution.”

About Knoa

Knoa Software is leading the performance management industry with end-user experience management solutions that reach beyond infrastructure and application performance to monitor, measure and manage how end-users are utilizing corporate software applications to optimize business process execution. Knoa customers not only know if core enterprise applications are delivering an acceptable user experience, but also, if application users are executing key processes effectively and efficiently – the key to achieving business value and ROI. Knoa was recently selected as a Gartner “Cool Vendor,” for its capabilities in end-user experience and performance management and was listed as a Leader in the “Forrester Wave: Passive Agent End-user Experience Monitoring.” Knoa is headquartered in New York, NY. For more information about Knoa, please visit www.knoa.com.

About Electronic Ink

Electronic Ink is an international design consultancy dedicated to improving the way people interact with technology, with their environment, and with each other. Since its inception in 1990, Electronic Ink has partnered with business, government, and educational institutions to transform their products and services by inventing and building better human experiences with technology. Our unique processes have gained a global reputation, as we have fostered long-term business relationships in the financial, pharmaceutical, energy, manufacturing, insurance, media, and software development sectors. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Electronic Ink boasts a diverse team of over 80 user-centered design professionals. For more information about Electronic Ink, please visit www.electronicink.com.