With a little over 2 months into my new job, several customer briefings, here I am, enlightened already with the concepts and importance of “performance”. I am referring to the performance of enterprise systems and applications.
I am beginning to realize that the bigger threat comes from within –Under-performance! No matter how compelling your offering is, a small issue (could be anywhere) can lead your customer out of the door, without a sale. This is what under-performance can do to you; hit you hard, much worse than your competitors.
“Performance” is the key to growth. This correlation can be as simple as:
High Performance & Availability -> Exceptional User Experience -> Revenue Growth and Loyalty
In many scenarios, competition is a secondary issue (performance being primary), and it comes into play only if you fail to demonstrate value of your offerings. Let me explain, why.
Today’s customers or users are accustomed to conveniences of working and interacting online and they prefer an app-based channel (web or mobile) over any other mode (phone or physical visit) of interaction including shopping. Even the smallest of issues, whether at the front-end (browser), or network, or at the back-end (app server or web server or the database) may hamper user experience. For example, an online customer not able to select a product to the shopping cart or is not able to successfully checkout.
This could eventually result in loss of business opportunity and may even displace loyalty to some extent. The threat or the risk associated with these kinds of performance issues is much greater than those arising out of a competition. Opportunity or revenue isn’t the only thing an enterprise can lose, reputation is also at stake.
Your enterprise systems or applications are ultimately intended to either make money or save money for you and your customers, and if performance issues are a roadblock in achieving these objective then it defeats the whole purpose or your digital business transformation or customer experience initiatives.
While performance is the most critical aspect, ensuring business efficacy of the enterprise systems and application is equally important. In my next, I’ll share my views on Quality | Performance | Availability.
Let me leave you here with few questions:
How do you ensure the delivery of an exceptional customer / user experience along with business efficacy of your mission critical applications?
Have you restricted your performance engineering initiatives to just development or QA or production only and not the entire application life-cycle?
*Views expressed are my personal*
