How can software be so bad?

Currently working on a database system that costs customers serious amounts of cash per year and big money for configuration. It does pretty much what the charity case management system database we wrote but where as that takes about a week to produce a 250 field database this system takes months to do something vastly simpler. It is also slow and near impossible to use. Some of it can be put down to short timescales and people without the right skill sets but the bulk of it seems to be just lack of a tidy mind. Muddling different concerns and concepts. Ah well.