Do you ever wonder how underperforming software impacts a company’s bottom line? I do, and I have analyzed the value of software that performs well, regardless of what industry or role that software is serving. The impact of slow response times and poor software quality on e-commerce platforms deserves its own paper, so here I will focus on the performance of software used in day-to-day operations as it relates to any business.

Every second a worker spends waiting on a poor-quality software system to respond is a second of downtime for said employee. While this may not sound like much, over time those seconds add up to serious business disruption. Oftentimes workers are waiting 10, 20, 30 seconds, and during worst-case scenarios, can be waiting much longer. Waiting significant amounts of time for software to respond to worker’s actions can impact business objectives and cause critical issues. We can use a simple formula to find out exactly how much downtime the system’s performance efficiency issues are costing the company.

NR = Number of Requests to the server for the user to complete their task

ART = Average Response Time from the server request to the user

DI = Daily Iterations, how many times does a single user do this task each day

NOE = Number of Employees doing this task

NR x ART x DI x NOE = Total Time Lost Daily 

 

Let’s look at an example: 

Sandra works for XYZ company. She uses a 10 page wizard to enter new shipment information into the system. Each next button in the wizard makes a request to the server, as well as the final save button. The average response time of each request is 10 seconds. Each day Sandra processes 25 shipments into inventory.

NR=10, ART=10,DI=25,NOE=1 

10x10x25x1=2500 seconds or 41.67 minutes.

Sandra works for a chain which has 5000 employees across the globe who have the same responsibilities.

NR=10, ART=10,DI=25,NOE=5000

10x10x25x5000=12,500,000 seconds or 208,333.34 minutes, or 3,742.23 hours daily.

Let’s look at what happens if XYZ’s development team does software performance testing and implements effective remediation strategies to correct the performance bottlenecks. In the accurate representation below, XYZ has reduced the average response time from 10 seconds to 2.5 seconds:

NR=10, ART=2.5,DI=25,NOE=5000

10×2.5x25x5000=3,125,000 seconds or 52083.34 minutes, or 868.06 hours daily.

    • If employees’ labor costs the company $20/hour, this performance delta in this single workflow will save the business $57,483.40 in downtime each day! The impact this can make on business functionality and performance is significant.

Eliminating disruptions to employee workflows can dramatically improve business performance, and with Vision Point Systems, you can access the testing and expertise necessary to ensure performance bottlenecks are minimized. Contact Us Today to find out how we can help you.

Author

Justin Harrison

Today, as the Senior Manager of Performance Testing Services at VPS, I lead a team of people dedicated to performance testing, and I am recognized as a leading subject matter expert in performance testing applications on the Appian platform.

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