We work with a lot of off-the-shelf software. SharePoint, CRM, AbleCommerce, SiteFinity, etc. The list goes on and on.

All of these tools have great functionality and tremendous value for the price.

But in all cases, what I see more and more in the software world is that great functionality just isn't cutting it anymore.

Customers want great User-Interface experiences (think Apple and the iPhone).

Customers want less training (after all, the point of all of these packages is to make our lives simpler).

Customers want to be able to control the User-Interface themselves. It's not that they think they're designers, but they'd like to try a different approach to a dashboard or data entry screen.

Most products have many tools to all the customer to create data structures, workflows, and content. Most products lack great tools to allow the customer to present that information in an application.

Customers would like the option to view their data in a list, or in a drop down, or a list that they can reorder by dragging items around on their iPad. Customers would like to create their own dashboards. Who knows what they really want to view before they application launches? Most customers take a guess.

I believe that's the next big think in software. Better User-Interface control. The technology to make this happen already exists. The back-end funtionality to store the data and business process is already built.

It's just a matter of when.