Cost saving is undoubtedly a priority for your IT team, especially as the wider business puts increasing pressure on you to save more and spend less. But improving the user experience is surely high on your agenda, too. While nobody wants to blow their budget, it’s far more frustrating to be limited in your role by lagging software and hardware that’s too old to handle updates.
The good news: today, thanks to Digital Experience, there’s no need to compromise. Riverbed Aternity is a Digital Experience Management solution that:
- Measures and analyzes what’s going on with your IT suite–at a granular level, according to your unique setup and needs.
- Facilitates non-invasive remote operation, intelligent automation, and self-healing–so you can focus on what really matters.
- Provides detailed, data-driven insight and analysis–empowering you to make informed decisions.
- Shows genuine, meaningful in-year savings–while making life easier for every single user.
Here are five ways you can use Riverbed Aternity to keep everyone working seamlessly and cut costs, and your carbon footprint, while you’re at it.
Supercharge productivity with reliable services
So often, organizations struggle to stay efficient due to poor-performing IT systems, and plug the gap by hiring more staff, buying more machines, or otherwise overspending.
The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust was wasting 947 hours a year dealing with blue screens across devices, problems with applications, and PCs running slowly. These situations would regularly go unreported, as clinicians were under pressure and focused on critical medical tasks. Without quick and easy access to the data they needed, healthcare workers were spending less time with patients and collaborating with other specialists–like GPs, mental health teams and social care professionals.
Meanwhile, one insurance company we worked with experienced productivity issues in its call center. Crashes, hangs and freezes meant customers were constantly cut off, and then had to wait up to 30 minutes to speak to someone again. So, the business employed more agents in an effort to minimize waiting times (and angry phone calls). This came at tremendous cost.
With Riverbed Aternity, you can pinpoint exactly when, where, and how frequently issues occur, and remedy them without needing to be told or waiting for things to go seriously wrong.
In fact, an international energy solutions company saved 2,000 employee hours using the solution to introduce proactive interventions. By making your people more productive, you can save money and their patience, leading to unexpected benefits like improved employee retention (which cuts recruitment and training costs as well). It’s a win-win.
Cut the volume of support tickets and the time to resolve them
IT support is another area that can drain financial resources, and your operators’ job satisfaction. After all, there’s a cost associated with tickets–generally averaging $100 or more each–and your team is the one that has to pay.
As Riverbed Aternity can proactively detect and address problems, it can drive an impressive reduction in not just the number of tickets you receive, but also the amount of them solved at Level 1–and the time in which it takes to close them altogether. Plus, because the tool gives insight remotely, IT staff don’t have to disturb users for their IP address or a breakdown of what they were doing on their computer when, saving everybody precious time and effort.
A multinational consumer goods company saw a 20% reduction in support tickets year-on-year after deploying the solution. Using that same proactive approach it was also able to detect when employees were away from their computers for long periods with their devices still on–like on breaks or overnight–shutting them down remotely and raking back an unbelievable $1.8 million a year to not only save the company $$ but make a strong contribution to their carbon footprint reduction objectives.
Energy company EDF used Riverbed Aternity in a similar way–checking when users last restarted their machines, sending them emails prompting them to do so if it had been a few days, and rebooting remotely if necessary. This helped keep hardware healthy, improved its stability, and reduced the number of support tickets received.
Break down the barriers to innovation
Innovation is another essential that comes with a price, and a risk. From upgrading hardware and amending application access to introducing virtualization and SaaS, you’re likely always looking ahead to the next useful technology. But that tech is only helpful if it works, and sometimes, it doesn’t. As you discover when real users find issues with the tool, and it’s too late to backtrack.
With Riverbed Aternity, you can test changes with those real users in a much safer way, creating small pilot groups before deciding whether or not to roll out updates to the masses. You can also see a clear baseline for performance before, during and after deployment, gaining an accurate picture of its effects, both positive and negative.
Take stock of your software licenses
Are all your staff using all your available software, all the time? License costs can add up, even if the applications themselves go unused. By implementing Riverbed Aternity, you can monitor the precise amount of time users spend on different software, and exactly what they use it for.
Perhaps employees only need the online version of a package you’re paying for on desktop devices. Maybe they don’t need certain tools at all. There’s only one way to find out, and once you do, you’ll be surprised how much you can save by downgrading or deleting unwanted solutions.
This was certainly the case for global food and beverage supplier Tate & Lyle. Using Riverbed Aternity, the company was able to allocate the correct number of software licenses to its user community, benefitting from a fantastic return on investment.
Refresh your hardware smarter, not sooner
Typically, organizations buy hardware with three- or four-year warranties. Once this time’s up, the machines are replaced. It’s expected, it’s planned for, and it’s written into your budget. But does it make sense?
Riverbed Aternity allows you to break free from this one-size-fits-all age-based approach. It constantly assesses whether devices still provide the optimal user experience, even after three or four years. When they do, less money is wasted on new hardware, and less tech ends up in landfill. When they don’t, they can be replaced–before the point that problems set in. Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, for example, used our solution to save a remarkable 42% of their devices this way.
Now it’s your turn. To learn more about Riverbed and Aternity, get in touch with our friendly team here. We look forward to supporting you in driving your budget-boosting, experience-enhancing IT transformation.