Enterprise applications have the power to drive client productivity and optimize customer experiences. A rise in productivity, coupled with a rise in customer satisfaction, serves to increase profits and build an organization’s reputation.
However, when apps aren’t deployed and maintained effectively, the results can cause a decline in productivity and profits.
Here are a few ways to deploy and maintain your organization’s apps in a way that drives profit and productivity.
1. Establish a Wide Area Network (WAN)
Wide area networks have greater traffic capacity than singular local area networks. If your organization is large enough to require several LAN networks, then combining them into a WAN network will speed up your processes.
This is important if your app requires low-latency and is dependent upon real-time updates. WAN networks reduce wait times for both clients and employees which serves to increase productivity and profit.
2. Craft a customized Service-level Agreement (SLA)
Once you have established the need for a WAN network, you will craft a customized SLA with a service provider. Before meeting with the provider it is important for you and your IT staff, as well as other stakeholders, to assess your organization’s needs.
Some factors to consider include:
- Security, encryption and regulatory requirements
- Network requirements
- Critical business functions
- Access and availability and team/department responsible
- Manage productivity, access and availability
Enterprise apps may have varying levels of business critical functionality. Highly critical apps, such as those that help manage lean inventory operations or track shipments will require low-latency, secure access and high availability across multiple stakeholders.
In a best case scenario, those who need access will be able to gain it, and uploaded information will be readily available for end users. The best case scenario occurs when an organization’s infrastructure can support app availability. This is accomplished by clarifying app network requirements and successfully meeting those requirements, even when those requirements fluctuate.
You can manage and monitor your app’s network requirements by including the following metrics in your SLA:
- Latency
- Fix times
- Network uptimes
- Application flow
- Packet loss
- Real traffic performance
It is important to remember that SLAs can be changed, updated and tweaked in response to these metrics.
3. Consider other business factors impacting profit and productivity
The metrics described above assist in crafting service agreements, but other factors are worth considering. For instance, your team might want to determine business and access priorities. Doing so will help maintain high levels of productivity and profit when bandwidth is constrained. Those with the highest workloads or time-sensitive needs can gain priority access. The same can be done with applications. The most business critical apps can be prioritized, making them highly efficient even during times of latency.
Overall, apps drive profit and productivity when employees and customers use them. By creating app support in the form of essential infrastructure and well designed networks will result in fast, accessible, secure and business critical apps that are used often.