If you think that monitoring your external-facing applications is enough to have your bases covered, think again. User escalations and complaints are much more likely to arise from your internal users than from customers and prospects. In fact, when external applications underperform, visitors will abandon to your competitors (some will also vent in Social Media channels). When internal apps slow down, regardless of where they are deployed, in your datacenter or in the cloud, phone calls to your helpdesk will start immediately as productivity stops. And remember, escalations from your VP of Sales or CFO will definitely get attention from your manager and upper management, which is not good news for you.
Therefore, just like you monitor your Website, you should also monitor critical internal facing applications.
Here are some quick guidelines to help you get started:
1. Identify which applications you are supporting
With an increasing number of employees bypassing IT and going rogue to the cloud, it is the Wild, Wild West out there. Take action and collect information about all software running on employee computers. You will be amazed by the results, since you may uncover hundreds of applications that you were not even aware of. If you need a software inventory tool, check out this free tool from ManageEngine, the makers of Site24x7.
2. Prioritize which applications to monitor
From accounting, invoicing, payroll, HR portals, CRM systems, corporate email, collaboration tools and so on, the list of applications your stakeholders (aka employees) rely on is long! Since you can’t monitor it all at once, focus first on those critical applications and systems that must perform well in order to run your business (e.g. corporate mail, CRM and accounting applications), and add other apps later on to your monitoring list.
3. Build your monitoring plans
With Site24x7 you can continuously monitor the availability and response time of internal and external applications at regular intervals, from an end-user perspective, and be alerted of problems instantaneously. As your build your monitoring plan is important to focus on these 5 areas:
- Key Web functions to test (for each target application)
- Monitoring locations to run your tests from (for example, headquarters and key office locations where many employees are located)
- Alerting policies and type of problems that will trigger an alert (response time, content errors, availability, SLA violations, etc.)
- Polling frequencies (it is best to monitor critical Web pages more often since revenue and productivity will be more severely impacted when they underperform)
- Reporting templates and SLAs
4. Don’t forget to monitor mobile enterprise apps
Just like you, employees and partners are on the go, and they rely on mobile sites and apps to get real work done. Download our new Site24x7 mobile monitoring app and turn your device into a monitoring location! Now you will be able to measure and compare mobile user experiences across applications, sites, carriers, corporate WiFi network and locations.
Ready to get started? Don’t leave your internal-facing applications behind! Sign-up for a free Site24x7 monitoring account!
It is easy to get started, and you will see instant value and results. No long-term commitment. No credit card needed. Just sign-up and monitor.
Happy Monitoring!
The post Internal Application Monitoring DO’s and DON’T’s appeared first on Site24x7 Blogs.
