We are pleased to share with you all an interesting article contributed by Gayle Levin who is director of solutions marketing at Riverbed Technologies. Previously, she held product marketing and campaign roles at VMware, Oracle, and Splunk as well as several startups. Her interests lie in the impact of technology on the way we think and work today.
Gayle Levin Directgor of Solution Marketing at Riverbed Technologies
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Measuring the ROI of end user experience investment can be tricky. Most analysis on the business value of end user experience management looks at a combination of qualitative and quantitative gains.
In one example, a regional healthcare provider was able to improve workforce productivity significantly. By implementing end user monitoring, they were able to troubleshoot performance issues and identify whether issues were in their own environment or their third-party provider’s. Through this process, the healthcare firm recovered 400 hours per month of lost medical staff productivity and reduced MTTR by nearly 95%.
Key areas of focus
According to industry analyst Enterprise Management Associates’ The Business Value of Digital Experience Management, companies are looking to the following benefits when they invest in experience management solutions:
Once you’ve determined your objective, you’ll need to understand the business metrics tied to the applications or transactions that you are planning to monitor. In a nutshell, all applications and transactions are not created equal and the business impact can vary dramatically depending on when a problem occurs. If the order processing system is down early in the quarter, it may lead to a delay in booking orders or loss of employee productivity but that same system going down the last 4 hours of the quarter can impact your quarter close process, revenue recognized, and ultimately share price. Same problem, different times, different impacts.
What should data should you collect?
It’s important to collect both technical and business metrics upfront. Some technical metrics that you should look to collect prior to calculating ROI are: response time per transaction, level of risk/security, availability, first call resolution, downtime per month, MTTR (mean time to repair), and service desk escalations. Business relevant metrics include: app-related revenues, external SLAs, service desk OpEx costs, fully burdened employee costs, software licensing costs, and customer/partner/employee satisfaction metrics.
Real-world examples of end user experience management savings
By using end user experience monitoring, an insurance company was able to reduce troubleshooting time by one-third and improve employee productivity. In this example, the insurance company leveraged end user experience management to identify the root cause of a problem impacting call center users (an older version of Chrome experienced memory leaks and crashed repeatedly). Developers were able then to correct the problem quickly.
A Global 1000 financial services firm that focused heavily on Six Sigma was looking to identify IT projects that drive continuous improvement of workforce productivity and customer service. They reported a 20% increase in workforce productivity over 3 years by using end user monitoring to continually identify new ways to speed the performance of applications and devices in their retail branches.
Why invest in end user experience monitoring?
The ROI of end user experience monitoring can span from customer retention to employee productivity to cost avoidance. It’s important to look at your use case, the criticality of the application or applications being monitored, and performance baseline and then calculate your ROI. Your customers’, partners’, and employees’ satisfaction is the ultimate ROI.
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