Why User Experience is Better in the Multitenant Cloud

A great user experience (UX) is vital to the success of an application in the life sciences industry. A better user experience results in faster training, increased adoption rates, higher user satisfaction – and ultimately, better productivity. Among the many advantages of multitenancy, the user experience is also better in a true multitenant cloud application. Here’s a closer look at why.

A Single Version of the Application

Historically, business users were more forgiving of poor user interfaces if an application addressed their underlying needs. Throughout the years, user interfaces have evolved with advances in technology. Whether it was green-screen terminals or windows-based client-server applications, the user interfaces were designed to address very specific serial processes and workflows. This is in stark contrast to today’s web-based experience where shortcuts to functionality and content are available with a click or gesture from any screen. Due to technology constraints, upgrades were labor-intensive, expensive, and infrequent, placing companies at risk if requirements changed. Some applications even resulted in poor adoption and use because they offered a subpar user experience.

Poorly designed products limit productivity. Applications that use white space badly, display cryptic messages, provide poor color contrast, and force users to hunt for hidden information and navigate with non-standard gestures create distraction. They may even cause users to lose trust in an application or, worse, stop using it entirely.

With modern multitenant cloud technology all users are on a single version of the application. All customers receive enhancements at the same time, which frees up product design and development resources traditionally dedicated to supporting and fixing old software versions. Instead, they can focus more time on designing new features and improving the user experience. And because cloud software is web-based, it’s easy to roll out updates frequently.

Gone are the days of immensely cluttered pages of data, confusing workflows, and endless hours of training. Business users have come to expect their CRM and other mission-critical business applications to be as easy to use and as visually pleasing as their preferred news, social media, and shopping applications – while simultaneously meeting their workflow and business requirements. A well-designed product enables a person to easily accomplish the right tasks at the right time, improving adoption rates and increasing productivity.

Faster Continuous Improvement

Because user experience is the design and subjective measurement of a product’s usability and utility, it’s typically difficult to measure. Fortunately, with multitenant cloud applications, there is a feedback loop that allows product teams to understand usage and immediately turn around improvements in usability. Multitenant cloud means frequent, seamless updates that, in Veeva’s case, are delivered at no additional cost – so with each release, the application improves with continuous customer feedback and innovation.

What’s more, design paradigms are always evolving. It’s no longer a “one-and-done” exercise. Advances in technology and design trends drive new patterns as users change the way they interact with their devices and applications. One of the more notable advances in UX within the last five years was the introduction of the capacitive touch screen on consumer devices. This inspired a broad shift to flatter, cleaner user interfaces that are more optimized for touch screens. With rapid development and release cycles, multitenant cloud software providers were able to quickly incorporate gestures such as swiping, pinching, and panning into their user experiences. Perhaps the next trend will be to build interfaces that react to gestures in the air rather than on the screen itself, already common with gaming consoles.

With the introduction of Apple iOS 7 and its new user interface, the product team at Veeva has embarked on a multi-release effort to update the iRep user interface to align with Apple’s human interface guidelines. This gradual process will continue to take into account your feedback and improve overall usability.

Thanks to multitenancy, every Veeva customer benefits from our efforts to continually improve our products for maximum productivity and user satisfaction.

Ted Wallach is a senior product manager at Veeva.