Digital Experience Monitoring – The App Developer’s Secret Weapon to Creating Awesome Apps
Application performance monitoring is the process of defining how the application functions in a given environment, while end-user monitoring tracks the outcomes of user behavior with the application. Digital experience monitoring (DEM) combines both the processes of application performance monitoring and end-user monitoring, giving a comprehensive analytics-focused metric of customer experience.
DEM is gaining popularity as enterprises are keenly interested in hybrid metric measurements that blend user experience and IT infrastructure performances. This data and analysis give the enterprise a boost in monitoring and measuring the end-user experience based on the performance of the application. With DEM, progress against meeting goals of customer experience (CX) becomes easier to measure and quantify. More profoundly, with DEM metrics, tools, and solutions being user-centric, IT, development, and QA can solve performance problems.
In fact, according to Research and Markets, the global DEM market size is expected to grow to US$ 5,960.87 million by 2028 (up from US$ 2,156.71 million in 2021) at a CAGR of 15.9%.
Mechanics of DEM
Rapid digital transformation and customer demand are accelerating the need to develop and deploy applications at a faster rate. Sophisticated development frameworks, tools, cloud technologies, and DevOps methodologies are being adopted to deliver as per expected demands. Once deployed, degradation of customer CX due to inadequate technologies, low-quality code, and other errors creep into the system.
This is where DEM tools come into the picture. Using high-grade technologies and analytics, DEM monitors both performance and user interaction to zero into areas of the application where degradation of performance begins to creep in. Based on this data, development teams can then debug the code and introduce measures to mitigate the customer experience degradation.
Simulations of various case scenarios are created to reproduce and replicate the area where customer experience has begun to falter in the application. Some of the other useful metrics being measured over and above functionality and user interaction are consistency, response times, speed, and availability.
DEM Benefits
With DEM, system architects can visualize the performance of the application from the user’s point of view via detailed metrics and analysis. Customer experience can be simulated to be able to get a broader perspective of expected customer experience.
Undoubtedly, customer experience is of paramount importance. With DEM, teams can zoom into problems of functionality, user interaction, and customer experience and prioritize which areas need to be addressed on the priority of retaining customer loyalty based on ease of use.
DEM can identify degradation in customer experience due to a new release or software upgrade of an existing application. The DevOps team can immediately use the metrics of the DEM platform to zero in the areas that have caused a new degradation in CX and redeploy another upgrade with the same mitigated.
DEM is not only beneficial for customer experience but is also used for enhancing employee and vendor experience. With “work from home” and telecommuting fast becoming a norm across enterprises, DEM data helps monitor employee productivity as they work remotely. DEM helps enhance employee experience and records metrics that could help address issues they are facing. Focusing on employee experience while using deployed software within the enterprise is critical for productive workflow management. Inefficient processes can be mitigated, and even decisions on whether additional training is needed for employees based on DEM data and their interactions with installed software can be taken.
Altogether, DEM gives a clearer view of whether business objectives that were set for a given application or feature are being met. The study of metrics generated by DEM amalgamating both user interaction and functionality gives the company an idea of whether desired customer experience goals are being met.
DEM Challenges
Return on investment (ROI) is difficult to estimate or calculate since DEM is a relatively new technology and its long-term impact are yet to be quantified accurately. Budget allocations for the same are also challenging to estimate during the inception stage of a project.
Metrics for DEM are well-defined for customer experience. Since introducing DEM for employees is relatively newer, HR departments within enterprises are still trying to define a realistic set of parameters for employee or vendor experience which is practical and sustainable.
Analysis of DEM is specialized, and if conclusions derived from metrics are wrong, subsequent modifications and iterations of DevOps could end up degrading customer experience even further.
Besides, there are privacy concerns about DEM as it involves tracking customer interactions within a session of the software. Compliance protocols and policies need to be adhered to within the enterprise.
Bottom Line
Digital transformation is an irreversible process and is being adopted exponentially across enterprises. Customer experience and the ease of digital use of any online software or service is a priority for achieving all business objectives and goals. DEM tools and platforms make these goals achievable. The good thing is that all the aforementioned DEM challenges can be warded off by partnering with experts well-versed in the nitty-gritty of the technology. Click here to learn more.