*By Cleyton Leal and Gabriela Camano
One of the most important dates for retail is approaching, Black Friday, and with it concerns about IT infrastructure management. Not having a technologically ready virtual store is like receiving the customer in a physical store without any structure, in front of a wide range of stores that carry out actions to attract their consumers. In other words, those who are not ready are left behind.
In this context, companies lose a lot in budget and productivity when they are not structured correctly. THE Hourly Cost of Downtime 2021 survey, carried out by the North American consultancy ITIC, points out that the cost of downtime, system downtime of large global companies can range from US$ 1 million to US$ 5 million per hour.
Therefore, to be prepared and achieve tangible results, the company needs to think beyond the sale and ensure a good user experience throughout the purchase process. This cycle begins the moment the customer enters the site, goes through browsing and making the purchase, and only ends when the purchased item is received with quality and speed.
The guarantee of this shopping experience, in turn, requires an efficient management of IT infrastructure, which involves the need to modernize applications, to be planned from the budget review for this purpose.
Changes in consumer behavior
It is true that the pandemic accelerated the growth of e-commerce. In a scenario where everything needed to be done online, shopping was not left out. One SmartHint survey revealed that Brazilian e-commerce revenue in 2022, in the first 5 months of the year, achieved an impressive increase of 785% compared to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. This process made the consumer learn to buy online and feel more and more comfortable in making their purchases over the internet. This change, however, made him more demanding.
O CX Trends Yearbook 2022, conducted by Octadesk in partnership with Opinion Box, revealed that for every three people who decided to make an online purchase in 2021, two dropped out because of a bad experience. In total, 62% of respondents chose not to buy a service or product because they had a bad time with the brand. Therefore, investing in cutting-edge technology to provide a good user experience is essential for organizations to remain competitive in the market.
What to do after migrating to the cloud
Migrating to the cloud is usually the first step towards effective IT infrastructure management. Although the vast majority of companies have already gone through this process, it is important to assess how this migration was carried out, to inhibit possible security breaches, in addition to ensuring an efficient cost.
That's because, migrating to the cloud requires a very high control of expenses and it is common to excessively increase server capacity, which increases costs. However, the same memory, processing and storage from a computer need not be the same as from the cloud.
Therefore, carrying out an environmental assessment to rightsizing, a readaptation to adapt the spaces to the need with cost savings, is essential. Another necessary point, as mentioned, is the validation of security, to avoid adversities in operations and data loss.
One study of Tanium, an American cybersecurity and systems management company, pointed out that 79% of UK companies only invest in cybersecurity after a data breach. This scenario is very similar to that of Brazil and needs to serve as a warning, since this is the time to focus on business flow modernization and not just application modernization. With a cost governance strategy, you can maintain cost-efficiency control to ensure sustainable IT.
The ideal IT infrastructure to optimize e-commerce sales
To change this scenario and be prepared for dates like Black Friday, the secret is to make a good management of the IT infrastructure, which starts with the diagnosis of what is needed, as a technology structure, to support the demand. In this sense, the first pillar is to guarantee an elastic infrastructure that sustains a significant increase in access to the site and serves users with the same agility.
The second point is to have an agile development treadmill, exploring the concept of DevSecOps (Development, Security and Operation). This step consists of developing solutions, combined with a series of tests to ensure safety and quality. Companies need to release changes to the site or make any corrections quickly and securely, with the highest possible quality, to prevent the end user from being affected.
In a third moment, the concern should be with telemetry. It compiles user browsing data, such as where they click, how much time they spend and the processing time of their actions on the site, in addition to measuring whether the experience is being good. This information helps guide important adjustments to the site that directly impact sales, such as the waiting time to be redirected to the shopping cart, for example.
In this way, a highly scaled infrastructure, a treadmill of DevSecOps and telemetry require the application of dashboards and data intelligence, that is, time and financial resources.
In less than two months, in order to manage basic IT infrastructure and achieve good results on this year's Black Friday, it is necessary to worry about tactical actions to support the demands. Another tip is to separate an infrastructure larger than the expected capacity, to avoid failures. That is, evaluating the capacity of the servers, the existence of a plan B, in case of a crash, and checking the entire payment point is a good start.
The challenges of managing IT infrastructure in companies
One of the biggest challenges for companies is having the budget and staff needed to execute the much-needed modernization projects. When talking about Black Friday, for example, the concern comes to the fore now, shortly before the date. This means that many adaptations are not carried out due to lack of time or are implemented incorrectly, applying a much larger budget, compared to planning carried out in advance.
Therefore, it is necessary to scale modernization projects in the budget of the company, so that the process is designed in conjunction with the planning of other sectors, such as sales and marketing. Without this interconnected work, the customer experience will certainly be compromised.
It is necessary to align technological changes and business needs, to move from the execution of tactical projects to strategic projects, which really impact the company. The secret is to look at the business and think about technology, and look at the technology and think about the business.
In other words, modernization technology is the innovation that will guarantee market competitiveness, adding service values with agility, quality and flexibility. The architecture has to be observed from the business point of view, so that it is possible to meet the demand in the dimensions: resource, complexity, risk, agility, value and business fit.
All this planning depends on expertise, manpower and a thorough analysis of each application, to consider the best way forward. Currently, the market has specialized companies in providing consultancy and modernization of this type of service, to allow companies to worry about strategic business issues, while they dedicate themselves to a IT infrastructure management efficient.
Technology can no longer be seen as a support for sectors, but as a business enabler. This process is often too disruptive for companies, which have difficulty provisioning budget for technology, but the time has come to turn the tables and ensure adequate infrastructure to ensure an excellent customer experience.
*Cleyton Leal, Application Services Leader, and Gabriela Camano, ITAM Director, both from SoftwareONE
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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