A survey conducted in July by security systems giant
Symantec has indicated that business application slowdowns affect
business productivity, customer loyalty, and employee
morale.
Common impacts of business application performance slowdowns
include sluggish response to user commands, long delays in business
transactions or processes, and slow loading web pages.
The survey revealed that 24% of IT staff time is devoted to
addressing business application performance delays. In complex
business application environments, delays can be caused by changes
or updates required to keep pace with end user demand.
Additionally, the IT professionals polled in the survey also
recognise that the performance and availability of these
applications directly affect the customer experience. Of the IT
managers polled, three quarters acknowledged that persistent delays
would affect customer loyalty to their organisations.
'Application performance delays are not only costly to the top
line but they also erode invaluable business assets such as
customer satisfaction and brand loyalty,' asserts Henri Isenberg,
vice president, server foundation and APM product group, of
Symantec.
'Customers have high expectations for their business
applications and expect them to perform quickly and consistently.
These findings emphasise the need for proactive end-to-end
performance management solutions.'
The findings of the study also indicate that application
performance slowdowns affect employee productivity and morale. Of
the business users polled, 86% stated that persistent delays would
lower their morale; in addition, 93% of business user respondents
noted that performance issues would affect their productivity.