Bernard Liautaud, founder, chairman and chief strategy officer of business intelligence software maker Business Objects, has spent a lot of time thinking about what enterprise software companies need to do to thrive into the future.

I spoke with Liautaud earlier this month at the iMeme conference in San Francisco and he told me what he considers three of the most pressing issues facing enterprise software makers.

Hybrid Model - He said enterprise software companies need to offer both an on demand and an on premise offering. "The mistake is to offer one service on demand or on premise," he said, suggesting that complementary solutions are best. Business Objects (BOBJ) offers business intelligence solutions on premise and delivers on demand solutions for clients interested in accessing external information. When I asked Liautaud if Business Objects can do this organically, he said, "We can do it organically, but we may have to buy certain components because the architecture is different. If you take Business Objects and make it on demand, it doesn’t work." He pointed to Inxight Software, a text analytics SaaS startup Business Objects acquired last month, as an example of an acquisition that the company is using to apply that architecture to other areas of its business.

User Experience - "There is a gap created between user experience at home and office. The user has expectations of ease of use and simplicity and is trying to find the same experience at the office." He noted that even the most basic enterprise software experiences such as filing an expense report are poor. "Enterprise experience has to be friendlier and simpler to the same extent it is at home." So, Liautaud is thinking about how to simplify the user experience at Business Objects. The challenge is that revamping that doesn't generate an immediate revenue boost. However, he added, that that is a short term view and since Business Objects is in front of the user, unlike something such as middleware, the company is putting increased emphasis on user experience.

Shifting Value of IT - Enterprise software used to just be about automating repetitive tasks. For example, CRM software automates the relationship between the salesman and the customer. The same applies to software in finance and manufacturing made by SAP and Oracle's Peoplesoft. However, Liautaud said the future is online information that is less transaction oriented and more about improving a company's performance, customer loyalty and profitability while reducing the cost of the supply chain. He said its a gradual process that moves companies from portals to dashboards and past analysis to real-time analysis.

For more on Bernard Liautaud at iMeme, see:
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