TrackVia issued a press release highlighting some key findings from a survey it conducted with 350 front-line business workers. In short, the release confirmed what we’ve long suspected – and heard from customers over and over again. Business users are frustrated with their existing software tools – or lack thereof. (Also see story on Denver Post’s TechKnow Bytes blog and PC World)

And while we suspected this frustration, we were surprised how widespread and deep it was. In addition to the findings highlighted in our press release, here’s some of the other brow-raising results that the survey revealed:

• Some 17.7 precent of respondents admitted they actually considered quitting their job due to the software they were using.  And when asked if people have ever considered quitting because they lacked the right software to do their jobs, another 17 percent (16.9%) said they had.
• Interestingly, Microsoft Word (47%) and Excel (35%) were the two applications that people said they liked “best”, although Excel was also among the applications people said they liked least (17%).
• Thirty-five percent or respondents said they wasted less than an hour each month due to application flaws or problems. Twenty-nine percent reported wasting one to three hours a month; 14 percent reported wasting 4-6 hours, eight percent said 7 to 10 hours. And three percent reported wasting more than 20 hours a month.

Perhaps more interesting was the apparent disconnect between front-line workers and the people building or at least choosing the software they used to do their jobs.  When asked to imagine that they knew how to code and build their own software, 61 percent of respondents felt they could design more effective applications. When asked if IT understood their jobs, nearly 20 percent said  “not very well”or “not at all”.

As many analyst firms have predicted in recent weeks, the Consumerization of IT movement is expanding beyond mobile phones into business software as more and more cloud-based computing tools like TrackVia make it possible – and even easy – for business users to build their own custom Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. 2012 should be an interesting year.

If you’d like to learn more about the survey or see the results, email me at Charles.var@trackvia.com.