Changing work habits push software makers to innovate

But no longer are workers tethered to a desk,or even to an office; we are all toting around laptops,tablets and smartphones to make every place a workplace. And so office software is changing. These days,what is important is collaboration,small screens,fast turnarounds,social media and,most of all,mobility. “The way people use things is fundamentally changing,” said Bret Taylor,chief executive of Quip,a start-up offering document-writing software that focuses more on mobile than desktop work.

Last month Box,an online service for storing documents,pictures and other data,bought Crocdoc,a company that makes it possible to view Microsoft Word documents and other popular file formats across a variety of devices at the right size for whatever screen is being used at the time. Evernote,another online storage outfit,allows people to write,edit and share notes together,instead of emailing multiple versions of a Word document to one another.

Both Microsoft and Google are scrambling to make their products reflect a work environment where PCs exist alongside other devices. There is a mobile version of Microsoft Office,which includes Microsoft Word,but it can only be used to edit certain kinds of documents and collaboration is limited. One reason for this,the company says,is that it does not want to force its user base to relearn too much,too quickly.

“We have one billion users of Office,” said Julia White,general manager of Office marketing. “You can’t expect them to change every day.” Still,social media touches,such as “liking” an email to show you’ve read it instead of writing a response,are likely to be seen in the future,she said.

An important part of mobile design is fewer choices: Keyboard commands are often favoured over icons to preserve screen real estate for the text. In Quip,pictures and tables are referenced by touching the “@” key on a pop-up screen keyboard,a nod to Twitter’s way of linking people together.

While Microsoft Word,by far the most popular word-processing software,offers more than 200 fonts,and Google Docs has 600,Quip has two fonts. Lists can be made in just three ways: Numbered,with check boxes or as bullet points. Headings come in small,medium or large,instead of the broad range of font sizes presented by Word. “It’s a freedom from choice,so you can focus on what you want to do,” Gibbs said. “A choice we made was to make it look good on any device.”

That is a convenient argument,but it also reflects the realities of making things work on small,touch-based screens,and the needs of the virtual office. Google Docs,now part of Drive,Google’s online storage service,is going through a number of revisions to work better on mobile platforms,said Jonathan Rochelle,the product manager for Google Docs.

It has always been possible to collaborate online and bring instant messaging into the process,he said,“but the challenge is trying to do it all”. Once a lot of workers in a corporation use a certain kind of software,he explained,they get used to its features,like fonts and icons,making it hard to remove what is familiar.

The giants of word processing have the talent and money to try to adapt to these expectations. Google does not give figures on its income from Docs,but people familiar with the business say the corporate version of Google Apps,which features Docs,brings in more than $1 billion annually. Microsoft’s business software division had revenue of $24.7 billion in its 2013 fiscal year. Quip gives away a personal version of its software for free and sells a corporate version,which allows more managerial control,for $12 a person each month.

Taylor of Quip says his software reflects changes that have already happened in the world. “Seeing who is working on what,chatting with them or deciding to collaborate,that is what we have here,” he said,nodding to Quip’s open-plan office. “Workplaces are changing,so expectations are changing.”