Designing for Enterprise as opposed to Consumer products, is it different?

Over the last few years the distinction between designing experiences for Enterprise products versus Consumer products has significantly narrowed and in few scenarios is undistinguishable; thanks to the fast evolving and adopted trend for ‘Consumerization of Enterprise Products’, and the change in user behavioural patterns as well as expectations.

Today, Enterprise users are exposed to a wide array of consumer products as well as social applications in their day-in-life at work and home. Flexible Enterprise policies like ‘BYOD – bring your own device’ and ‘CYOT – choose your own tool’ has fuelled employee exposure to common productivity/communication tools in their work life and has proven to enhance employee productivity. Growing collaboration and accessibility needs (from anywhere and anytime) owing to the change in business dynamics as well as user behaviours have forced enterprise product creators to reshape their strategies (e.g. Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs) and imbibe social platforms as well as features. The overlapping experiences have uncovered an open design canvas for us ‘the experience designers’ and there is a noticeable change in the design thinking and approach. Mobile, gaming, etc. design paradigms have become a stimulus and seemed to be widely embraced for shaping intuitive and personalised enterprise product experiences.