RealDolmen : Your online applications through the eyes of the user

These expectations obviously also apply to mobile banking apps. As an end user, you definitely want to feel as though the app you are using to manage your money is reliable. Good performance is one of the parameters that gives an end user a sense of security. By contrast, poor performance leads to frustration and lost customers.

It is not always easy to find the cause of a performance-related problem. The cause may be located in the infrastructure, but could equally well be in the application code. It could even be the end user's device that is obsolete or underpowered. The challenge is to identify these black holes in your application's performance.

Challenge 1

Banks have long possessed ample in-house technical knowledge about their mainframe. However, the rapid evolution to 'mobile any time, anywhere' has led, for example, to banking apps that now increasingly run on the client - i.e. the end user's device - rather than on the bank's mainframe servers. The bank's IT department therefore has a much more restricted view: What device is the end user running? Is it obsolete? Does it have sufficient capacity to run the banking app? What browser and bandwidth is the end user running on? These are questions to which there is no immediate answer, but which can very much have an impact on an application's performance and so lead indirectly to complaints from end users and customers.

Challenge 2

'Mid-tiers', or the gateways between the end user's device, the internet and the mainframe, are another uncertain factor. The IT department has a limited view of these too.

Challenge 3

Single-page applications (e.g. built with Angular) also create blind spots when it comes to identifying performance issues. A single-page application has just one URL, which does not change (or barely changes) when the user clicks on a link displayed on that page. This means it is not possible to measure the time it takes for the selected item to load, because the page technically does not change. So it is not possible to detect poor performance of a link on a single-page application.

The solution

Dynatrace AppMon (Dynatrace Application Monitoring) is a tool that provides a solution to the three challenges above. Dynatrace AppMon performs end-to-end tracking of all transactions within one application or across applications, giving you a seamless view of the performance of these transactions and any fluctuations that may occur.

Focusing on the user: KBC is a role model

KBC joined forces with Dynatrace and Realdolmen to monitor the performance of its KBC Touch online banking platform more effectively and make changes where necessary. The bank wanted to detect potential bottlenecks and ad hoc performance issues, in order to be able to resolve them immediately, and also gain insight into the application's development to prevent future performance issues.

However, a tool like Dynatrace AppMon cannot resolve these issues on its own if it is used without the necessary expertise. Application Performance Monitoring delivers a wealth of data that only becomes valuable once it has been effectively managed. Realdolmen has defined procedures and set up processes for KBC to structure, manage and interpret this data, and has developed dashboards to enable the right people to view the right information.

In addition, the experts at Realdolmen have set up a community operation to allow more teams to make use of this technology, and have provided training on Dynatrace, so that KBC now has an internal quality team comprising its own Dynatrace experts. The experts at Realdolmen continue to be available to provide support and solve more complex issues.

'We are now behind the wheel, and we can see for ourselves the impact that the user experience is having on our business. This tool is extremely powerful and fully automated, and is the first time that we have been able to combine IT, marketing, business management and customers in one process.', Thomas Rotté, Chief Performance Officer at KBC Bank

Working effectively without any blind spots with 'Visually complete '

Application Performance Management does not end with the technical results. The challenge today is to detect how the user is feeling − just as if the customer were actually standing in the bank. After all, informed users feel less frustrated. Proactive monitoring is the best way to eliminate potentially irritating situations and maximize the service provided to users and customers.

KBC and Dynatrace are leading the way in the APM industry. Thanks to its latest feature, 'Visually complete ' Dynatrace is now able to detect the moment an image is loaded and becomes visible to the user on-screen, including for hybrid single-page applications such as KBC Touch. It offers KBC an unprecedented level of accuracy in its measurements, to better meet the ever-increasing demands of its online customers.

'Online banking is a source of income for banks. However, the more often customers log in to the banking platform, the more it costs - even if customers just want to quickly check their bank balances on their phones. Did you know that some providers give banks a discount if they can demonstrate the exact percentage of mobile use? Dynatrace helps you track this mobile percentage.', Bert Van der Heyden, Consulting Business&IT Alignment, specialist Dynatrace bij Realdolmen.

Bert Van der Heyden, Consulting Business&It alignment

Do you want to know how Dynatrace can improve your performance too? Please contact our experts by sending an email to info@realdolmen.com.