For the past 30 years and more, organisations of all stripes and sizes have been turning to technology to drive efficiency and productivity across the enterprise.

Helping them make those gains is the raison d'être of software companies large and small and, in the digital era, their numbers have proliferated. In 2022, customers are spoilt for choice when it comes to finding specialised solutions to run their businesses.

Understanding the issues upfront

But how good a job do developers do, when it comes to identifying customers’ pain points and evolving their platforms and programs to address them?

At Class, we recognised a couple of years back that we had some room to improve.

That’s why we’ve amplified our efforts on the customer experience front; hiring a team of CX experts and partnering with research agencies to help us get the data we need to make smarter decisions about the future direction of our software suite.

As one of Australia’s leading developers in wealth accounting solutions for accountants and advisers, our mission is to streamline the administration of self-managed super funds and trust accounts and make it easier for finance professionals to manage investment portfolios, entities and corporate compliance.

Our developers now work hand in hand with customers at every stage of the product development lifecycle; mapping their user journeys, identifying common problems, sharing designs and conducting qualitative and quantitative research before they embed new features into our platforms.

The customer knows best

Why do we put so much effort into this process? There are a number of reasons. Firstly, we work in a niche market and our customers are experts; highly trained finance professionals who understand Australia’s complex compliance landscape far better than we can ever hope to do. Making a change to one of our platforms in the absence of their input might, for example, make it trickier for them to conform to a regulatory requirement. That’s hardly an optimal outcome for them, or for us, and consulting them throughout the development process reduces the likelihood of this occurring.

Second, we know that internal bias is real. What we think is important, and right for our customers, may be way off the mark. The sooner we find that out, the better. Testing our assumptions at the outset means we devote all our energies to making meaningful improvements and don’t expend time and resources developing products and features that don’t deliver significant benefits to our customers.

Making a good thing better

And third, because the more journey mapping we do, the more user testing sessions we conduct and the more feedback we collect via our dedicated feedback portal, the more we deepen our understanding of our customers and the landscape in which they operate. Actioning those insights is the key to continuous improvement; to making a great product better and better.

Customers agree. Ours regularly tell us we’re the first vendor they’ve heard from in two decades and more. They appreciate the opportunity to be part of the development process and to contribute to the evolution of a solution that enables them to operate their practice more productively and profitably and to deliver an outstanding customer experience to their customers.

Working together for the win

Developing a substantial specialist solution is almost invariably a collaborative affair. Many heads – and many perspectives – are better than one and bringing customers into the circle from the get-go is a win-win. If the software vendors you do business with aren’t affording you the opportunity to be part of the action, now is a good time to ask them why.