When the 80/20 Rule Hits Business Software

We all know the Pareto principle. We may call it by different names, but getting 80% of the result with 20% of the effort is a business dream.

In business software, from the client's perspective, the 80/20 behaves differently. It becomes 20/80. For a business, it's often the last 20% that creates the most value – and that's the 20% that would take the developer an extra 80% of effort to meet the client's needs.

It's not that we don't want to meet our clients' expectations. We do. And we are. It's the marketing pressure of "only €10/month" that pushes many software companies to optimize for volume rather than the needs of a particular client. Not just optimize, but build their entire business logic around "cheap and large".

Cheap and large translates to "one size fits all". That's where mass production shines. And that's where the 80/20 rule becomes the 20/80 rule for the customer. If one cheap, standardized tool covers only one slice of your business, you end up stacking many tools. At that point, the total cost starts moving toward custom-system territory, while the workflow itself remains fragmented.

There is no right or wrong answer as to which approach is "best" – a stack of tools or a system that fits every angle that matters. It depends on the nature of the business, management's preferences, and its style of working.

What usually creates tension is the mismatch in expectations: choosing a mass-produced solution while expecting it to behave like a tailored one. Or choosing something closer to a tailored solution while expecting it to cost like a mass-produced one.