www.niit-tech.com Customer Experience Management Paving the way for tools adoption and continuous delivery NIIT Technologies White Paper
CONTENTS Abstract 3 Shift in focus from response-based mechanism for enabling high transaction rates 3 Providing users with faster access - propelling the need for benchmarking 3 Bridging the gap - the way ahead 4 Adopting a single version of truth 4 Conclusion 4
INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT Abstract Most enterprises today are saddled with disparate IT systems and legacy processes together with diverse channels. It results in an inconsistent customer experience across markets and geographies. In order to deliver effective customer experience, they need to re-define the way they engage with customers, apart from delivering products and services. Customer experience now depends on the time taken to execute a business transaction - no longer on turnaround time and meeting SLAs. While this remains the foundation of digital customer engagement, it is not enough; customers are increasingly looking beyond engineering metrics. All Customer Experience Management platforms must use updated SOA services to bring flexibility to business processes; enabling systems and solutions to communicate dynamically. It will enable platforms to run and operate without a break for maintenance or deployment. Updated services use automated code promotion and deployment techniques. Updation of SOA services for monitoring end-to-end business transactions is more relevant rather than just monitoring infrastructure platforms or application platforms. This paper examines some of the factors that are currently polarizing the world over the issue of adopting customer experience management, and its impact on the use of monitoring tools to gauge and enrich customer satisfaction as never before. Shift in focus from response-based mechanism for enabling high transaction rates As organizations compete to connect and attract prospects and customers, it is important to scrutinize user expectations and perceptions in order to move quickly and stay ahead. For example, tolerance levels of consumers waiting for a website to load are at an all-time low. People are expecting optimum performance irrespective of the devices or location from where they connect. This kind of prejudice against latency sharply underlines the need for organizations to ensure high performance of their websites. The user expectation is all about end to end transaction time. A transaction time of even one to three seconds can result in dissatisfaction among customers and abandonment of the portal. Organizations are now shifting their focus to mobile apps in order to reduce dependencies on portals and their performance. However, the dependency of mobile apps on APIs requires another dimension that requires a performance management mechanism in place. Providing users with faster access - propelling the need for benchmarking The mission to provide digital experience on desktop browsers and websites has rapidly shifted the focus to areas where the visitors have the ability to move between channels without noticing major changes in user experience. End-users expect a quick response/resolution to application performance or availability issues sometimes within minutes. A barely-working application is no longer the yardstick; rather, it is about performing to satisfy customer expectations. Competitive benchmarking is increasingly gaining popularity. There are numerous factors influencing performance - changes in infrastructure, site architecture and third-party integration strategies, web browser advancements, ISP stability and increase/decrease in site visitor volume. However, it is best for organizations to understand users and prioritize the performance of their applications accordingly. It will ensure high availability and reliability of applications. Some of the key drivers for benchmarking include increase in mobile usage, the necessity to rank customers digital experience, measurement of browser user experience and recognition of changes in the industry. 3
Bridging the gap - the way ahead Some of the common pain points that affect businesses today include the inability to track the root-cause of the problem, lost revenue and slow performance of applications. These pain points are primarily a result of the applications becoming complex day by day. The inability of the organization to innovate faster to stay ahead of the competition and inability to identify prioritize and resolve performance issues that have a business impact. The increase in the frequency of these issues has led to a pressing need for more demand, intermittent release as compared to a planned, defined release. There is clearly a sign of polarization between a highly digitized world and a more orthodox industrial world. Customer experience management is the way ahead in achieving polarization through minimal disruptions to critical processes in order to complete business transactions in real-time. However, in a highly industrialized digital world, SLA management is a key ingredient in achieving better customer satisfaction by focusing on elements such as downtimes, breakdowns and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). End- customer satisfaction and operational efficiency brew up the perfect business case for looking at monitoring tools as the best available alternative - the proverbial bridge between the user expectations and IT s ability to deliver. We plan to mitigate these gaps through single pane monitoring environments i.e. customer, business transactions, application services and infrastructure components. This shift will also require prioritizing automation, establishing baselines and shifting from mere 24*7 infrastructure teams to a team that understands business outcomes/impact of the services. tools of preferred partners. Varied tools and techniques rarely meet the objectives of embracing true customer-centricity. The key is to provide an integrated monitoring architecture that spans customer touch points, automates key business processes and delivers a single version of the truth - increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and reducing resolution time. Conclusion With consistent increase in complexity across the application delivery chain, delivering end-customer experience is becoming more and more challenging. Customer experience management is all about focusing on providing exceptional business services to both internal and external customers. With increased dependencies on IT to meet business objectives, there is a constant need for real-time visibility into business transactions. NIIT Technologies focus on customer experience management stems from our history of new ideas and innovation. We were quick to appreciate that Customer Experience Management (CEM) is all about responding to customer interactions and meeting or exceeding their expectations, thereby increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. Our team is committed to focusing on areas where end-consumer experience is critical, which depends on the application performance within the IT landscape. Our Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solution offers the following - a) Monitoring entire IT stack including applications b) Monitoring critical business transactions and services Adopting a single version of truth Gaining customer loyalty, growing customer revenue, and winning new customers are primary focus areas around which an organization s business strategy is built. However, organizations have multiple tool stacks managing IT infrastructure, applications, business transactions and customer experience - leading to multiple versions of incidents and difficulties in resolving them. Since modern applications have a number of connection points between the end-user and the data center, performance issues can arise anywhere along the application delivery chain. In addition, ecosystem components use their set of proprietary, open source c) Monitoring end-user experience in real-time The solution reduces the number of incidents, speeds up mean time to resolution, increases IT productivity and, ultimately, delivers the experience your customers end-users expect. We have partnered with companies that are in Gartner s Magic Quadrant of business leaders in the CEM and APM stack. It enables us to showcase successful cases that clearly demonstrate the benefits of technology deployment and business value that we provide for every customer. 4
About NIIT Technologies NIIT Technologies is a leading IT solutions organization, servicing customers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. It offers services in Application Development and Maintenance, Enterprise Solutions including Managed Services and Business Process Outsourcing to organizations in the Financial Services, Travel & Transportation, Manufacturing/Distribution, and Government sectors. With employees over 8,000+ professionals, NIIT Technologies follows global standards of software development processes. Over the years the Company has forged extremely rewarding relationships with global majors, a testimony to mutual commitment and its ability to retain marquee clients, drawing repeat business from them. NIIT Technologies has been able to scale its interactions with marquee clients in the BFSI sector, the Travel Transport & Logistics and Manufacturing & Distribution, into extremely meaningful, multi-year "collaborations. NIIT Technologies follows global standards of development, which include ISO 9001:2000 Certification, assessment at Level 5 for SEI-CMMi version 1.2 and ISO 27001 information security management certification. Its data center operations are assessed at the international ISO 20000 IT management standards. India NIIT Technologies Ltd. Corporate Heights (Tapasya) Plot No. 5, EFGH, Sector 126 Noida-Greater Noida Expressway Noida 201301, U.P., India Ph: + 91 120 7119100 Fax: + 91 120 7119150 Americas NIIT Technologies Inc., 1050 Crown Pointe Parkway 5 th Floor, Atlanta, GA 30338, USA Ph: +1 770 551 9494 Toll Free: +1 888 454 NIIT Fax: +1 770 551 9229 Europe NIIT Technologies Limited 2 nd Floor, 47 Mark Lane London - EC3R 7QQ, U.K. Ph: +44 20 70020700 Fax: +44 20 70020701 Singapore NIIT Technologies Pte. Limited 31 Kaki Bukit Road 3 #05-13 Techlink Singapore 417818 Ph: +65 68488300 Fax: +65 68488322 A leading IT solutions organization 21 locations and 16 countries 8000+ professionals Level 5 of SEI-CMMi, ver1.2 ISO 27001 certified Level 5 of People CMM Framework Write to us at marketing@niit-tech.com www.niit-tech.com D_93_150515