What can be common between enterprise solutions and a car? If you start listing, you will be surprised that if you look at them from the perspective of a product, there are many common traits, like they both serve specific needs. A common aspect from a product perspective is that both have a flawed design approach.

Chances are, you have read the unfortunate news of a billionaire executive dying in a freak accident in a Tesla. I read it this morning. However, get into the details of how the accident unfolded. You will find certain aspects that happened, have happened more than a million times before, and will probably happen a million times again. However, there has been no focus on incorporating design elements to avoid these shortcomings. Previously, it has been due to a lack of technology. But technology is not a constraint in 2024.

Two main drivers led to the unfortunate event. One was the driver going into reverse vs. drive. This happens a million times every year, probably in the United States alone. Even a decade ago, it was not possible to prevent this from happening. But in 2024, a significant portion of these events can be avoided with technology.

Search YouTube for videos of drivers rammed into a store from a parking lot. They are trying to back up and end up pressing gas in drive mode. It probably happens every day and may have happened somewhere while you were reading this. The irony is there are simple fixes. Cars do not start in drive mode to safeguard against the vehicle starting and ramming into something. But once the car starts, we rely on humans to make prudent decisions. Humans have too much on their minds. We are constantly distracted, even when we drive. Have you realized how much multitasking we do while driving?

When we are accidentally close to delete a document or post that we have not saved, we get a message asking “Are You Sure….?”. In 2024, we have technology to implement that same kind of technology to avoid certain types of accidents. At least in high-end cars, or cars that tout to be technology marvels, like Tesla.

The solution approach is simple. A three-point turn has a shifting pattern. If the first two steps indicate that a driver is planning to take a three-point turn, but the shifting pattern deviates, there can be a warning and a momentarily locking of the shift and transmission to make the driver aware. The driver needs to acknowledge in some way to unlock. A similar solution can be devised for scenarios where the car rams into a shop or another car from a parking lot.

Cars that tout “drive-assist” capabilities should be able to use cameras and sensors to warn the driver that they might be going into the wrong shift before releasing the transmission. Deep learning can analyze front and back camera footage to determine if the car is still in a parking lot AND if the vehicle needs to reverse or drive. That information gets leveraged if the system senses that the driver may be shifting wrong.

But why did I compare this scenario with enterprise software? Just like cars are fascinated with how fast they can accelerate (0-60 in x seconds), while some key problematic aspects persist, enterprise solutions are focused on fancy acceleration, in terms of fancy features, while ignoring some fundamental needs of the end-user. And that ensures they are in that rat race eternally, trying to survive.

There is now so much competition in the technology domain that solutions are racing to showcase that they are more powerful and technologically cutting-edge, and a tiny player in your space can infuse that same technology with little to no difficulty. Such is the state of technology.

But identify how your features, functionalities, and all the power of your solution come together to address the real challenges that need to be addressed, and your organization will deviate from being sales-driven to a true technology-given organization. The days of selling technology through salespeople and relationships are on the cusp of disappearing.