We operate in a complex industry - Travel and Expense. There are thousands of content providers, millions of options, all of which are multiplied by the number of companies we do business with, then multiplied again by the different geographies across which both KDS and our customers operate.
Add in varying expectations for how a product like ours should behave and you have a recipe for the mother of all engineering challenges. This is where the interesting part happens: when I speak to customers about what they want, they generally respond with the same answer: "less". I’m serious, they don't want more, they want less.
Ok, when I say "less" what I really mean is "less complexity". They don’t want to be exposed to a spiderweb of choices, criteria and conditions, they want simple, easy to select, narrowed options. When they have a problem they don't want a huge range of options or variety in how it will be resolved, they just want it fixed.
As I start this new chapter of KDS' development I think this is probably the most important thing to consider. We can continue to enrich our products, we can continue to add support staff and consultants and we can flood the market with sales people, but if at the end of all of that we have not made a complex world a little simpler then we will have missed our goal.
I want KDS to be a linear, simple, easy business. I want customers to easily interact with us, I want our products to be intuitive to use and I want our partners to enjoy collaborating with us. Too many people in our industry glorify and glamourise the complexity that surrounds us and in glorifying it, they perpetuate it. I ask you to join me, industry friends. Let's make it really easy, together I know we can.
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