Managing Automation - January 2009 - (Page 14) FREE E-NEWSLETTERS SUBSRIBE NOW! news managingautomation.com maonline Go online for daily news updates in perspective can’t manage something you can’t measure. Improving the user experience requires being able to monitor, measure, and analyze that experience. And that’s the focus of a relatively new category of software called end-user experience management. One of the champions of this new category is a New York City-based company called Knoa Software. Founded in 2003, privately held Knoa has been helping companies deliver what it calls an “acceptable user experience” as well as helping to ensure that business processes enabled by an application are executing effectively. Knoa’s software product, called Experience and Performance Manager (EPM), collects a series of metrics in two dimensions. One is in the experience received by an end user, including such metrics as response times and application errors, and the other is in performance achieved, which tracks, among other things, end-user errors. EPM also captures information about workflow. This month, Knoa will bring out version 5.5 of EPM, which will include a series of role-based dashLori Wizdo boards and reports. EPM currently works with SAP and Oracle applications as well as Microsoft’s CRM product. Knoa claims that EPM can substantially cut support costs. “The time spent in end-user support calls can be cut by 50%,” said Lori Wizdo, Knoa vice president of marketing, in a recent briefing. The past year has been one of momentum for Knoa, which now has about 75 customers, including Kimberly-Clark, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Pfizer, and BASF. In March 2008, Knoa announced that SAP would resell EPM and in May the company won a software innovation award from the Computing Technology Industry Association. In addition, Gartner Group dubbed Knoa a “cool vendor” and Forrester Research called the company a leader in “passive agent end-user experience monitoring.” “We are targeting a problem that few technology providers have attempted to solve,” Wizdo said. “We recognize that complex business systems only deliver results when people, process, and the technology work together.” Amen. — David R. Brousell Alliances, Executive Appointments, Mergers & Acquisitions, Products Transform your business through technology FREE Newsletters include: • MA Daily News Alert Hot off the press news exclusives written by MA Editorial • MA Membership Alert Another key takeaway of the study for manufacturers and technology vendors alike, Barkai said, is that understanding how product development processes fit into a company’s broader business goals cannot be accomplished through broad generalizations based on vertical industry or company size alone. For example, responses to MI’s survey of more than 300 manufacturing companies, on which the PLM study was based, for the most part were not aggregated around number of employees. Rather, responses tended to be grouped according to company revenue, geography, and type of value chain. Barkai, therefore, advised technology vendors to develop a more sophisticated view of market “archetypes” based on a mix of attributes, while manufacturers should look beyond traditional competitors to companies with similar strategic goals, processes, and PLM maturity for best practice models. “Companies believe only others in their immediate space can have relevant best practices,” Barkai said. “But often there are opportunities for lessons learned within other industries.” Finally, MI predicts that PLM adoption will continue to be very inconsistent, characterized by great success in some areas and lackluster progress in others. “After so many years, PLM is still somewhat undefined,” Barkai said, “with the characteristics of a nascent market.” — Diane Himes The latest industry research, products, news and web events Compete in the new global economy for years to come • Progressive Manufacturer • Viewpoint WHY OPTIMIZING THE USER EXPERIENCE IS KEY TO ROI ne of the biggest issues companies have had over the years with enterprise application software is maximizing its use. Much functionality in these expensive programs is either underutilized or not used at all, leading to sub-par performance, lower return on investment and, perhaps most unfortunately, questions about the value of the technology itself. While a number of factors influence the usage equation, one that has been getting more attention of late is how effectively the end user interacts with the application, what some have called the user experience. Software providers have been hard at work trying to improve such things as the software interface itself as well as streamlining the process by which a program executes. As engineers will always say, however, you Provocative and inspirational, features the opinion columns in print with exclusives online O • NEW Lean Matters Refreshing commentary on the pursuit of lean manufacturing Sign Up Today at: MANAGINGAUTOMATION.COM /NEWSLETTERS ® 14 January 2009 http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.MANAGINGAUTOMATION.COM/newsletters
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.