by Zibis Group, Inc.
The corporate IT infrastructure conversation continues to transition from a technical discussion to a strategic one. For example, how can organizations deliver unique customer experiences that capitalize on their knowledge of the customer and the market? Customer-centricity, markets of one, and next best action are just three of many examples that describe how customers can be addressed in a unique and personalized manner. Customers want to be known and valued; not just processed. Business leaders believe that the customer experience will be their primary basis for competitive advantage, and look to incorporate mobile, social, and cloud technologies to deliver these experiences.
One of the oldest metrics for measuring customer satisfaction continues to be response times
Even if the user experience is significantly personalized, customers are not willing to waste time waiting before moving on. To exacerbate the issue, and despite the added IT infrastructure complexity to provide these unique customer experiences, the threshold for customers willing to wait before growing frustrated and abandoning a site has dropped to two seconds compared to four seconds just three years ago.
“Slowness (or speed) makes such an impact that it can become one of the brand values customers associate with a site.”
Response times can be one of the easiest to address at the infrastructure layer. The IBM z13 for example, builds on the mainframe’s legacy being able to deliver response times in milliseconds. It provides a high-performance integrated hardware platform with multilayer virtualization that eliminates the need for multiple physical servers and reduces or virtually eliminates the additional physical network connections.
Independent studies show that IBM z Systems hosted applications show faster response times by as much as 2.8 times compared to those hosted on competitive platforms [from Solitaire Interglobal, Reflection of IT Architecture in Customer Experience, 2014].
Further, to build highly personalized customer experiences, the addition of an analytics engine is required. Trying to integrate an analytics engine on another platform however, can negatively impact response times, holding up a transaction to make a network call to the analytics engine. Embedding real-time analytics for transactions in-flight in high-volume environments, without jeopardizing service levels is truly only possible by inserting the engine directly in the transaction path. To facilitate this, the IBM z13 provides analytics natively. Rather than requiring data to be moved off the mainframe to other computing systems, the IBM z13 has the ability to access and analyze large data sets in real-time providing a comparative reduction in response times of up to 64% [from IBM, IBM zEnterprise System: Performance Reporting on Exploiting Large Memory for DB2 Buffer Pools with SAP, Brenda Beane, Seewah Chan, and Dr. Paul Lekkas, December 18, 2014].
In addition to quick response times, the customer perspective for cloud computing means that certain expectations of quality must be met. Customers at both the personal and business level expect the same level of service with no down time. New promotions can quickly go viral thanks to social media, creating an influx of millions of requests through a system with no advanced notice, and the IBM z13 provides similar attributes to cloud computing where users can lease computing time and resources that are provisioned dynamically to meet these needs.
Customers are increasingly demanding a real-time response irrespective of more complex environments
More than wait times, customers expect subscribed services to be up and available at all times. When interacting with a website or a mobile device, customers expect a system response that is both real-time and sophisticated. Sometimes this is based on policies or regulations that constrain decision making, and in other cases organizations are using Big Data to understand how to best treat a customer.
Today, organizations are creating highly personalized experiences that engage and exhilarate consumers, without breaching the customer’s trust. Creating digital channels that reach deep into every aspect of individuals’ lives. The IBM z13 provides a single environment to address what customers’ value—their experience—which increasingly needs to exceed expectations if a product or service will continue to be used, valued, rated, and sometimes more importantly, shared.
Read more about the IBM z13 mainframe.
Read other posts in this series:
Driving Digital Business: Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC)
Strategic IT: New Mainframe Technology Supports the Newest Mindsets
Scaling Up Data Centers in an Environmentally Responsible Way
About the Author: Zibis Group Inc. (“Zibis Group”) is a leading source for market research and advisory services on the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and related sectors. We assist vendors, government institutions, academia, non-profits, and other key industry stakeholders by providing them with the tools they need to make informed decisions. Zibis Group is a niche player in the marketplace for customized ICT sector research. We understand that all companies have distinct interests and unique business challenges. We thrive on rising to the occasion and in seeing our clients succeed. Technology is changing and we’re here to help.
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