My previous boss recently tried to pick up an enterprise solution. He runs a non-software company that has a lot of custom internal apps - 90% built/maintained by interns. Of course the intern-built custom apps are super buggy but the bugs get fixed immediately, and the system is tailored to the company's way of doing things. The company spent an obscene amount of money just demoing a full-fledged SAP-type thing to potentially replace the custom stuff, but they ultimately found the rag-tag web apps better and cancelled the SAP contract.
That whole situation convinced me pretty thoroughly that "enterprise" software is indeed a form of large-scale snake oil. I think most businesses can go a long way with just spreadsheets and email.
Nothing gets me as excited as a lowly footsoldier in a company as when the c-suite decide to spend $100mil doing a custom install of a big name software stack that will "totally change the way we work and at the same time be fully customised to the way we work here".
This is one of the reasons I'm bullish on no-code doc-apps like Coda [0]. I recently started consulting with someone who calls himself "The Coda Guy" and pulls together truly wizard-like apps out of Coda [1]. (Coda is effectively a hybrid of Excel, Google Docs, and Notion.)
I think the "Excel+" category should receive a lot more attention than it does now. I can easily see "no-code" tools like Coda taking over Salesforce and effectively filling the niche you describe.
Agreed, except for the spreadsheets. Please get people to use server based databases instead. They are no longer difficult or expensive to install or use and make life so much better even for 'interns' and it will reduce their workload dramatically as well as increasing the quality of the solution..
That whole situation convinced me pretty thoroughly that "enterprise" software is indeed a form of large-scale snake oil. I think most businesses can go a long way with just spreadsheets and email.