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CRM solutions, like Siebel, automate complex business processes where high levels of application performance are crucial. Yet many frustrated execs find that despite the small fortune they have spent on products to manage servers, networks and applications, the business constituencies still complain about the performance, usability and availability of the Siebel CRM application. What is often overlooked is that application performance is just one of three key drivers of return on investment (ROI) from your Siebel application. An efficient infrastructure is critical. It's important to optimize the Siebel application for your own unique business environment, user needs and usage patterns. But, it's all for naught if you do not build and sustain adoption and efficient and effective use of the Siebel application by your end users.
How can you tell how if your Siebel solution performs for each person who uses it? How can you identify which users have difficulty executing which transactions? What does it mean when your end users say the system is "slow"? How can you pinpoint the actual issues with the real data you need to take corrective action? Knoa can give you the answers.
Enterprises with mission critical Siebel deployments do not have accurate measurements of adoption, efficient use, and effective use of the application by the end users. Without these measurements, companies are unable to identify and resolve critical issues that impact the user's ability to optimize business process execution. The result is significantly reduced ROI, and significantly increased cost of application support.
Knoa? Software is leading the performance management industry with end user experience management solutions that reach beyond infrastructure and application performance to monitor, measure and manage how end users are utilizing the application. Knoa customers not only know if core enterprise applications are delivering an acceptable user experience, but also, if application users are executing key processes effectively and efficiently ? the key to achieving business value and ROI.
Knoa Experience and Performance Manager (EPM) monitors enterprise applications from the perspective of the end user to capture the actual end user experience. Knoa EPM captures transaction response times as well as ecosystem and application errors ? along with a time-synchronized workflow ? from all users, at all locations, at all times, across the entire application. This information is used for alerting and proactive remediation of end user issues (whether they are system errors, user errors or performance problems). Knoa EPM also analyzes and aggregates information to provide actionable insight into process compliance, training requirements, adoption issues and a number of other management dimensions.
Knoa EPM provides a complete picture of end user experience by focusing on both the experience the end user receives from the application and the performance the end user achieves working with the application. You can think of Knoa EPM as the "third leg" to the performance management stool ? infrastructure, applications, and now, end user metrics. Think about it! The infrastructure is monitored and measured and optimized; application execution across that infrastructure is monitored and measured. In a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting an overwhelming 87 percent of IT executives either strongly agreed (50%) or agreed (37%) that the best way to manage the service of business critical applications is by measuring performance at the end user level and rapidly resolving significant performance problems.
Clearly, there's a need for a change. In fact, the Forrester Consulting report found that change is imminent. Sixty seven percent of the surveyed organizations are either much more focused (27%) or more focused (40%) on the end user experience than they were two years earlier.
ROI Isn't Real Until It's Realized
The initial investment in CRM applications is high. Software licensing costs can range from $1,000 to $2,800 per end user. Implementation services are 2-3 times the software costs and there is investment in back-end infrastructure. Ongoing costs are high, as well. Software maintenance averages 20%, annually. Gartner reports that 60% of ongoing costs of a typical deployment are for support staff. ROI is only realized from this investment if the end users adopt the application and use it efficiently and effectively to improve the execution of core business processes ? which is very difficult to achieve.
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