Workers encountering new technology in the office traditionally must endure lengthy training or spend hours poring over reference manuals. But that is changing as more business-software firms aim to simplify their products by mimicking the look and feel of familiar Web sites.

Many vendors have "consumerized" their corporate software and online services, making them easier to learn and navigate by borrowing heavily from sites such as Facebook or Amazon.com. They have also tried to make their products more intuitive by shying from extraneous features -- a lesson learned from simple consumer products such as Apple Inc.'s iPod.

One such firm is SuccessFactors Inc., a Silicon Valley company whose online software helps employees and managers write performance evaluations and set work goals. Its software lets users create personalized employee profiles with their own photos and has dynamic organization charts where executives' photos can be dragged and dropped across the screen.

When Belkin International Inc. started using SuccessFactors's software, the Compton, Calif., maker of electronics equipment simply directed employees to some explanatory documents on Belkin's internal Web site.

"Most people just went in and used it, no problem," said Donna Van Gundy, Belkin's human-resources director. Employees "just don't want to be bothered" with training courses, she added.

Other business-software vendors have designed their products with an eye toward ease of use. Rearden Commerce Inc., a Foster City, Calif., company that sells online software for managing expenses such as business travel and package shipping, has been developing its products with a 20-person "user experience team." Many of the team's members hail from consumer companies such as Apple and electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. and were hired to translate their consumer-product know-how into business-oriented offerings. Likewise, Omniture Inc., a Web-analytics firm based in Orem, Utah, has a similar team to help it fine-tune its products, which executives say typically require no formal training to use.

Online software offered by Salesforce.com Inc., which boasts 1.1 million subscribers to its sales-management service, "was basically a replica of the Amazon.com user interface," Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said. Though Salesforce offers a two-hour, online tutorial to introduce users to its product, the training is minimal, Mr. Benioff said, because commonly used Web sites such as "Yahoo and eBay are training people in how to use complex applications" already.

It is all part of what research firm Gartner Inc. calls the "consumerization" of corporate software. "Employees want an Apple out-of-the-box experience at work, too," said venture capitalist Dave Whorton, who was one of the early backers of SuccessFactors. "We've moved to an environment where no one will tolerate manuals or training."

Inspired by easy-to-learn products and popular Web sites, companies want to provide workers with photos, videos and links -- and access to all of it on the Internet with one username and password, executives of corporate-software companies said. The offerings have come a long way from the original, complex business software sold by companies such as Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, which had to be installed and maintained on desktop PCs and took time to learn. Lately, those companies have been moving to simpler, Web-based variants.

One problem for vendors such as SuccessFactors is that as their products become more sophisticated and laden with more applications, they can become more complicated and harder to use, said Ben Pring, an analyst at Gartner. "And the run the risk of diluting what made them successful in the first place," he said.

SuccessFactors, of San Mateo, Calif., cites many consumer-Internet influences on its products. The employee profile page, for instance, is "very much like an enterprise Facebook," said CEO Lars Dalgaard, noting that the software lets employees compile their own profiles, post a photo of their choosing and list their work history, educational background, professional training, goals and other information.

"It helps with global operations," said Belkin's Ms. Van Gundy. "What if I talk to Yvonne in the U.K. every day but I don't know what she looks like?" Viewing Yvonne's profile might help the employee get to know her better and work with her more effectively, Ms. Van Gundy said.

The core features of SuccessFactors's products also draw on consumer Web design. The performance-review product has an internal tracker that tells people when they are 40% finished with writing a review or 75% finished -- a feature common to consumer-tax software such as Intuit Inc.'s TurboTax, said Rob Bernshteyn, SuccessFactors' vice president of global product marketing and management.

Michael P. Hanson, chief operating officer of Affinity Health System, a Menasha, Wisc., company that runs three hospitals and two dozen health clinics, said Affinity uses SuccessFactors to track whether it is meeting a long-term goal to improve ratings patients give it for customer satisfaction. He said he can check SuccessFactors on his laptop and quickly see how Affinity is doing on those types of goals -- his status bar will be yellow if the company is behind, or green if it is ahead of plan.

Affinity did hold some training for the new software, mostly just to tell managers and employees about the schedule for rolling it out, Mr. Hanson said. "I basically went into the product and found all kinds of neat ways to use it before I ever got into my training," he said.