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In our fiercely competitive business environment, companies are constantly pressed with time. The ability to reduce the time between development and launch is critical.
Moreover, to ensure customer satisfaction, and long-term success, solutions have to function without flaws, and errors have to be solved instantly.
In the case of IT systems, it is even more true, where any disruptions in a system can have detrimental downstream effects on a host of other applications, devices.
To make sure that the systems are working as they should, and users (both customers and employees) experience flawless service, companies are now equipped with data from various solutions, that support the tracking of the multivariate factor, which is user experience.
Real-User Monitoring (RUM)
Making users happy should be the number one priority for all service providers that wish to stay ahead of their competitors, increase customer retention, and productivity. To measure satisfaction, real-user monitoring (RUM) can provide invaluable inputs for companies.
Real-User Monitoring (RUM) is basically using the data about the actual users of an application to gain insights into the performance of the solution.
RUM follows important metrics such as the loading time of certain elements, the timing of DNS, page load time. Through the insights generated by these user-data, software development teams can identify problems that undermine user experience and user satisfaction.
The data gathered by RUM are sourced from real-life user sessions, instead of so-called “synthetic” monitoring. Actually, RUM is usually thought of as the opposite of synthetic monitoring.
Synthetic monitoring is based on transactions that were not generated by real-users, hence the term “synthetic”. A good example of synthetic monitoring is when a service is pinged to receive data about service availability, and response time.
RUM and synthetic performance monitoring together are usually referred to as Digital Experience “Monitoring” (DEM).
Digital Experience Management (DEM)
According to the definition by Gartner:
“Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is a performance analysis discipline that supports the optimization of the operational experience and behavior of a digital agent, human or machine, with the application and service portfolio of enterprises… This discipline also seeks to observe and model the behavior of users as a flow of interactions in the form of a customer journey.”
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is a broader concept, than real-user monitoring alone. DEM basically encompasses the whole user journey and aims to gain insights about the user experience across the complete process, from the first to the last step in which the user interacts with the application. With its ground-up design and endpoint-centric approach, DEM is a more complex and comprehensive process, which involves a variety of user experience monitoring and management tools.
Both of these solutions can provide unique insights into different subsets of user experience and satisfaction. Therefore, these are more complementaries, rather than replacements for one another.
Real-user monitoring (RUM) has a more narrow focus. It highlights the metrics associated with the actual user sessions, to identify any disruptions and delays.
DEM, on the other hand, is a broader discipline, and it covers different devices, applications, networks, and other resources related to user experience, and satisfaction.
If you are interested in learning more about our solutions, including our Digital Experience Monitoring, visit our website, or contact us directly.