It depends on what business you are in. If yours is primarily a B2B - design may or may not be that important. If you can solve a pain point - it doesn't matter what the solution looks like. You can see the result of that in any SMB software product - they look horrible.
However if you are trying to do a B2C people have wildly different expectations. They've seen better online products. Consumer internet products these days set a pretty high bar in design and user experience and if you don't have that, it will be difficult to get them to use your product.
However if you are trying to do a B2C people have wildly different expectations. They've seen better online products. Consumer internet products these days set a pretty high bar in design and user experience and if you don't have that, it will be difficult to get them to use your product.