Digital experience monitoring helps understand how users interact with various applications. It allows you to develop issue-free applications, thus enabling a productive work environment. However, if you're still on the rocks as to why you need to invest in a digital experience monitoring solution and plan a strategy around it, consider a few reasons that can help.
The Internet of Things
The past few years have seen an increase in digital appliances using the Internet of Things (IoT). It has changed how we view business. Earlier, certain things we thought were in stone, for example, humans would be the only consumer interacting with an application. While we still are the primary consumers, it is now also important to track the interactions that machines have between themselves. More often, applications talk to each other, share information, and update data. It is essential to track these interactions as they play a significant role in helping our users. An app can likely continue an abandoned schedule and disrupt processes within the work environment, or if communication between apps isn't seamless, then an app can miss scheduling an important meeting. Either case, a DEM solution can ensure this doesn't happen.
Mobile Applications Need Monitoring
Organizations implement monitoring strategies that typically address native applications but fail to account for mobile applications. It may be that these organizations noticed their user metrics to find that only a small number of users use the app yet fail to ask if their app doesn't meet user requirements.
A report from Statista estimates that by 2025, revenue brought in by mobile apps will hit about 613 billion USD! This projection shows that people use mobile applications often. DEM solutions ensure this.
They monitor the application's overall performance, API ability to deliver and communicate with the app's backend infrastructure, and if these APIs return valid information with errors or delays. These are essential aspects to consider for your DEM strategy.
Downtime Can Happen Anytime
As unfortunate as they are, outages happen due to human error or machine or network failure. Due to this, we can say that outages are not a 'one-and-done' thing. We need to ensure that our IT team prepares for another outage. Downtimes lead to many challenges like losing revenue which leads to irate bosses, being unable to work, resulting in irate employees, and many more. While you may not have to deal with large-scale outages, your internal SaaS apps can face these issues. Since organizations rely on many mission-critical apps to run their business, it is essential to track application up-keep.
DEM solutions can detect outages at least 2 hours before the provider does. End-user experience monitoring solutions track app responsiveness, and we get constant reports on its performance. This way, your IT team can always stay ahead of an outage. You can also implement contingencies into your DEM strategy while the provider fixes the outage.
Stay Competitive In the Game
According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, 92% of company leaders believed that their business models would no longer remain viable at the current rate of digitization. It is no surprise that in such a situation, a digitally advanced firm has a significant advantage over its competitors. DEM solutions can make this process seamless. Here's how:
DEM solutions let you handle outages, desktop client issues, web performance problems and more effectively.
It gives you detailed application usage performance insights.
It allows you to share information with team members helping you to remediate faster.
Multiple Protocol Support
Applications always work with multiple protocols. DEM solutions can help you monitor the most significant protocols for your organization. Monitoring protocols like HTTP, WebSockets, and FTP are essential, and you need to include monitoring these protocols in your DEM strategy.
Is The Focus on Page Load Time
While page load time is an essential metric to consider, the focus of monitoring your application must be user based. User perception is the key metric, and DEM solutions help you monitor them. You can understand if users focus on those aspects of the page that don't load or those they can interact with on the page. DEM solutions also focus on the Perceptual Speed Index, Speed Index, and Critical Resources Index to help organizations measure the perceived page load time.
Support for Agile
Agile methodologies ensure organizations release products faster and increase the need for an effective CI/CD process. Experience monitoring strategies ensure that code releases don't cause user performance degradation.
Read: What Makes Performance Testing So Essential To Your SDLC
Conclusion
Organizations embracing digital transformation need to provide their users with better experiences by monitoring all aspects of the digital experience. Issues within the system can cause the organization to lose revenue, employees to be less productive, or worse, damage the brand. DEM solutions ensure that users are happy by delivering the best user experiences.