Why Your Grandmother Can Use an iPhone But Your Team Can't Use Enterprise Software

My 78-year-old grandmother in France sent me a perfectly composed text message with emojis last week. She’s never read a manual, never taken a computer class, and certainly never attended a “digital transformation workshop.” Yet she navigates her iPhone like she’s been doing it her whole life.

Meanwhile, I just spent an hour on a call with a Fortune 500 company whose employees need three weeks of training to submit an expense report in their new “state-of-the-art” enterprise system.

Something is deeply, fundamentally broken here.

The $100 Billion Lie

The enterprise software industry is built on a massive lie: that business software needs to be complex because business is complex. This lie is worth over $100 billion annually to software companies who’ve convinced corporations that confusion equals sophistication.

I know this because I lived it. Back in 2009, I worked for the second biggest telecom company in France—a $5 billion operation. When the CEO asked me to review our vendor contracts, I discovered our “cutting-edge” contract management system was so complex that nobody actually used it. Instead, I spent six months manually building an Excel spreadsheet with 52 columns and 500 rows.

The software we’d paid millions for sat unused while I did the work by hand. Why? Because it took 47 clicks to upload a single contract. FORTY-SEVEN CLICKS.

The Complexity Conspiracy

Here’s what the enterprise software industry doesn’t want you to know: over 70% of enterprise projects fail because of poor user adoption. Not because the technology doesn’t work. Not because the features aren’t there. But because human beings refuse to use software that makes their lives harder.

Think about it. Apple designed the iPhone so well that toddlers can use it intuitively. They literally pick it up and start swiping. No manual needed. Yet Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft want you to believe that grown adults with college degrees need months of training to use their “professional” software?

It’s not incompetence. It’s intentional.

Complex software creates an entire ecosystem of dependency:

• Expensive consultants to implement it
• Costly training programs to teach it
• Ongoing support contracts to maintain it
• Regular “upgrades” that require more consulting

The more confusing the software, the more money flows to everyone except the people actually trying to get work done.

The Hidden Cost of Confusion

When I started Concord, I made a simple observation: 90% of business contracts are signed with zero negotiation. People just want to get deals done. They don’t need 500 features. They need clarity, speed, and simplicity.

But here’s what traditional enterprise software companies told me:

• “Business users expect complexity”
• “You can’t be taken seriously without advanced features”
• “Simple software is for small companies”

These are the same people who build systems where finding a document requires navigating through seven different menus, each with its own completely different interface design.

One of our customers recently switched from a major enterprise CLM system to Concord. Their comment? “We went from 3 hours to 10 minutes to create a contract. Our sales team actually uses it now.”

That’s not an edge case. That’s the norm.

The Psychology of Bad Design

Enterprise software companies have mastered the art of selling to people who don’t use their products. The buyers—usually C-suite executives—are impressed by feature lists, integration capabilities, and fancy demos. The actual users—the people doing the work—are an afterthought.

I’ve sat in these sales meetings. The vendor shows a beautiful dashboard that the CEO will look at twice a year. They demonstrate AI-powered analytics that sound impressive but solve problems nobody actually has. They promise to “transform your business” with complexity that requires transforming how humans naturally think and work.

Meanwhile, they hide the fact that their contract workflow requires users to remember 15 different states a document can be in, each with its own rules and permissions.

It’s like designing a door that requires a PhD to open, then selling “door opening training” as an add-on service.

The Simplicity Revolution

Here’s the truth they don’t want you to hear: business processes aren’t inherently complex. We make them complex.

At that French telecom company, our contract approval process had 23 steps. Twenty-three! When we mapped it out at Concord, we realized you could accomplish the same outcome in 4 steps. The other 19? Corporate theater. Checkboxes that existed because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

This is why your grandmother can use an iPhone but your team can’t use enterprise software. Apple asked, “How can we make this invisible?” Enterprise vendors ask, “How can we make this profitable?”

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he didn’t brag about its 10,000 features. He showed how you could do three things really well. That’s the difference between designing for humans and designing for purchase orders.

Breaking Free from the Complexity Trap

If you’re trapped in enterprise software hell, here’s what actually works:

Question everything. When someone says a process needs 15 steps, ask why. Usually, they can’t tell you. We discovered that most complexity exists to justify someone’s job, not to create value.

Start with the user, not the buyer. If the people doing the work hate your software, it doesn’t matter how many features it has. At Concord, we test everything with actual users, not committees.

Remove more than you add. Every feature you add is a feature someone has to learn, maintain, and troubleshoot. We regularly kill features that only 1% of users touch. Our sales contract automation works because it does fewer things better, not more things poorly.

Measure time-to-value, not features. How long does it take a new user to do something useful? If it’s more than 10 minutes, you’ve already failed. Your grandmother doesn’t have time for your 3-week training program.

The Future Is Already Here

The dirty secret is that simple, powerful business software already exists. Companies like Stripe, Shopify, and yes, Concord, have proven you can handle complex business processes with simple interfaces. We’re just fighting against an industry that profits from confusion.

The pandemic accelerated this shift. When everyone went remote, companies couldn’t fly in consultants for month-long implementations. They needed software that worked immediately. Suddenly, simplicity wasn’t just nice to have—it was survival.

Now, 65-70% of our customers don’t even have legal teams. They manage complex contracts with software simple enough for anyone to use. Because when you remove the artificial complexity, you realize most business processes are just common sense.

The Emperor Has No Code

The enterprise software emperor has no clothes, and it’s time we all admitted it. Your business isn’t too complex for simple software. The software is too complex for your business.

Every time someone tells you that professional software needs to be complicated, remember: your grandmother is video-calling relatives on another continent with two taps. She’s not special. The iPhone designers just respected her intelligence enough to make things simple.

It’s time we demanded the same respect from enterprise software. Because if a 78-year-old grandmother can master modern technology without training, maybe the problem isn’t the users.

Maybe it’s the software.

Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform that believes business software should be as simple as consumer apps. After suffering through enterprise complexity at a $5 billion telecom company, he built the system he wished existed: powerful enough for big business, simple enough for anyone to use. Over 1,500 companies now use Concord to manage their contracts in minutes, not months.