Technologists must be ready to seize new opportunities as application performance becomes a boardroom priority

By James Harvey, CTO Advisor EMEA, Cisco Observability

Across all industries, C-level executives are increasingly focussing their attention on digital experience and the availability, performance and security of applications. According to new research from Cisco, the performance of applications, and their impact on the business, is now being discussed at a board level within as many as 50% of global organisations. Whereas experience was often solely the preserve of the IT department five or even three years ago, now it is rapidly becoming established as a strategic priority for C-level executives. The reason for this shift is the fact that experience is now a decisive battleground for customer acquisition, employee engagement and retention, and for revenue growth.

Business leaders recognize that commercial success is now hugely determined by an organisation’s ability to deliver innovative, intuitive and seamless digital experiences. Consumers are actively searching for the very best, most exceptional experiences, and they are ditching brands whose applications don’t live up their expectations. The research reveals that the performance of business-critical applications and digital services, and their impact on the business, is now reported to C-level executives on a consistent basis in as many as 80% of global organisations. Senior leaders are looking to their IT departments to provide full visibility and insight into application performance and, crucially, to demonstrate how applications are driving value for their organisations.

For technologists, this heightened focus on application performance at the most senior levels of the organisation presents a massive opportunity to step up and prove their worth. They can position themselves as important, strategic operators, with a unique understanding and perspective on how their organisations can mitigate risk and exploit new opportunities for revenue growth. In order to do so, however, they need to arm themselves with the right tools and insights.

Business leaders want greater visibility and insight into experience
We’ve seen a big shift in the last year or so with senior leaders wanting to understand and track the experience that customers and employees are receiving when interacting with their organisation through digital channels. And crucially, they want to identify the application performance and security issues which pose the biggest threat to customers. With this insight, leaders can direct their resources and investments to mitigate potential risks to revenue and reputation.

For example, C-level executives in retail organisations are looking to analyse application performance at every stage of the customer journey, from sign-up and log-in, through to search and check-out. They want to map out the entire workflow and then examine the speed and efficiency of each of the underlying pieces within it.

In financial services, senior leaders are placing huge emphasis on digital experience monitoring to ensure that they’re able to match and better the innovative, personalised experiences being offered by new players in the market. Meanwhile, in manufacturing, we’re seeing a marked increase in C-level executives who are wanting to scrutinise (and optimise) the performance of processes across their SAP landscapes.

Technologists don’t have the right insights to engage in business level conversations
Against this backdrop, almost all of the CIOs I’m speaking to are urgently looking to ensure that their strategies and teams are fully aligned to wider business strategy and objectives. Technologists know that the spotlight is on them and pressure is mounting. Not only do they need to ensure that their applications are available, secure and operating at peak performance at all times, they also need to be able to report to senior leaders on how their applications (and they, themselves) are delivering value to the business.

For technologists, this new dynamic represents a profound (and daunting) change. They’re being asked to report on application performance in a more business-focussed, strategic way and to engage in conversations around experience at a business level. They’re operating outside their comfort zone, far beyond the technical reporting and discussions they’ve previously encountered. Of course, technologists are used to rising to a challenge and pivoting to meet the changing needs of their organisations and their senior leaders. We saw this during the pandemic, many will (rightly) be excited about the opportunity to expand their skills and knowledge, and to elevate their standing
within their organisations.

The challenge that many technologists face, however, is that they currently don’t have the tools and insights they need to operate in a strategic manner. Many don’t have full visibility across their hybrid environments and they’re struggling to manage and optimise application availability, performance and security in an effective and sustainable manner. They can’t easily detect issues, and even when they do, it is incredibly difficult to quickly understand root causes and dependencies in order to fix issues before they impact end user experience. The likelihood of their organisation suffering a revenue and reputation-impacting incident is growing rapidly.

At the same time, very few technologists are currently able to connect application performance data to business outcomes. They have no way of tracking how experience is impacting key business metrics around engagement, conversions and revenue. In other words, they’re completely unable to respond to the demands of their senior leaders.

Full-stack observability enables technologists to drive business value and to operate at a strategic level
In order to overcome this worsening situation, technologists need full-stack observability. It provides full and unified visibility across hybrid environments, at the application level, and into the supporting digital services (such as microservices or Kubernetes), and into the underlying infrastructure-as-code (IaC) services (such as compute, server, database and network) they leverage from their cloud providers. Full-stack observability (enables technologists to cut through complexity and high volumes of data to locate, understand and resolve availability, performance and security issues across application entities.

Crucially, full-stack observability also enables IT teams to correlate application data with real-time business metrics, so that they can identify and prioritise issues and threats based on potential impact to end user experience. With a business lens on application performance data, IT teams can take a more proactive approach, focussing their skills and time on what matters most to customers and, ultimately, to their organisations.

Ultimately, with full-stack observability, technologists can measure the impact of application performance on the business. We’re now working with growing numbers of technologists who are reporting to C-level executives on an ever expanding set of business metrics, from average revenue per session and average revenue per transaction, through to ‘revenue at risk’ from potential outages, and overall user experience (based on defined workflows). They’re engaging with senior leaders on a strategic level, showcasing their understanding of the business and demonstrating how their work is driving better business outcomes on a daily basis.

With 98% of business leaders predicting that demand from C-level executives for visibility and reporting into digital experience will increase over the next two years, all technologists need to act now to ensure they have the insights they need to respond. In doing so, they can demonstrate their strategic value at the highest levels of their organisations and accelerate their careers.