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Monitor critical business transactions

Written by Ana Canteli on 1st June 2018

The digital era has reached all businesses. It is no longer possible to control the performance management of an organization without considering the application performance, transaction monitoring, application monitoring and their impact on the root cause analysis, database monitoring, performance visibility and experience of the user (employee) or digital customer experience. Because an unavailable application that has terrible web performance rates, underscores response time or general performance issues can very negatively affect the perception of the performance benchmarks of the company; in addition to reducing the productivity of workers, increase the frustration for customers, interest groups and more.

Therefore, transaction monitoring and application monitoring helps organizations to detect and identify any execution problems in critical applications for the company, even before such incidents affect the final user.

With billions of business transactions continuously delivered throughout our information management operating systems, security information, network security - network performance monitoring- web application performance monitoring and transaction monitoring are the fundamental pillars of critical applications monitoring tools for companies. Through the application performance monitoring, the IT operations manager and web application managers can identify if the problem comes from the data center, middleware; due to the message queue, cloud application availability, etc. These are the most common sources of incidents for business performance management applications, and the monitoring of critical business transactions helps with knowing why. Through the observation and analysis of business transactions, performance metrics information are collected in real time regarding critical transactions for the real user and business applications, primarily to protect the company from threats, offer new products and services and improve the business logic.

Business transaction monitoring can help companies maintain and even increase the quality of service that the organization offers through web applications or mobile applications. Obtaining data in real time about transaction traces is especially relevant for digital transformation and digital experiences because it allows them to react faster in a sector, in which performance management and application performance monitoring are critical factors for the organization's survival. Moreover, critical applications monitoring tools can be very useful in pre-production environments (proactive monitoring), in which the developments can be tested, and potential bottlenecks identified before the developments are used by the staff. Transaction monitoring shows high-value information about how the company's critical application set is acting and therefore do what is necessary to optimize its configuration. This process will reduce the time that the technical staff devotes to minimizing error rates (ensuring that these alerts are the product of real and relevant incidents) and dedicate their efforts to develop application intelligence platforms, efficient infrastructure monitoring, application integration projects, trustworthy network administration or runs the business intelligence.

In these scenarios, the OpenKM document management system can help monitor critical business transactions in the company. The OpenKM enterprise content management system offers Java, PHP and .NET SDKs that allow OpenKM to be connected to any company application (cloud applications, web applications), so that the document manager can act as a container for all the information that emerges from the transactions of the deal. Since in OpenKM, we can generate reports on any element that is of interest to us; automate the generation of reports, receive them whenever we want or do the same with alert notifications, either by email or through the OpenKM mobile app. Moreover, is that the big data generated by business transactions are information that needs to be managed, to be consumed and used in decision making.

The OpenKM document management system allows you to monitor the flow of critical documents of your business, at all times. It makes possible the creation of a global multiplatform system that monitors the flow of big data that is exchanged with partners or customers at the international level. OpenKM can be used to make sure that all business content such as purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices, acknowledgement of receipts, notifications of naval boarding, sales report, warehouse inventories, etc., follow the business rules or protocols defined in the document management system. Also, if they do not, the system itself will send an alert to those responsible for the process.

Because a failed critical transaction can have severe consequences for the business; it can stop a production line or delay a shipment. That makes it impossible to pay the contracted services on time, but also to obtain the necessary liquidity to pay payroll. It is therefore clear that an organization depends directly on its ability to manage business transactions that provide documentation at the required time and with the necessary quality.

For this, the company can use the multitude of features offered by the OpenKM, document manager. Through the modules, the organization can expand the functionalities of the program, to adapt the system to each case:

• Multi-company: it is an ideal solution for organizations that operate through a network of offices. Each office has access to its sub-instance, while the central office manages the server, the maintenance, and the HR structure.
• Barcode: OpenKM incorporates a barcode identification and a reading module that supports linear and 2D barcodes by default, although the plugins architecture allows this capacity to be extended to other formats.
• Mail archiver: it allows the preservation and automated protection of the communications that the company exchanges with suppliers, clients, and interest groups. Enables the recovery of lost or deleted emails by mistake, satisfy audit requirements, protect intellectual property and the practice of eDiscovery in case of litigation or internal investigations.
• Electronic invoice: OpenKM extracts the invoice in XML format to store them in the system and incorporates other functionalities to validate invoices through the digital signature - OpenKM provides at the same time an electronic signature client - among other activities.
• CMIS: is a specification that allows the interoperability of Enterprise Content Management Systems. It is advisable in the following scenarios: repository-to-repository (When several content repositories operate together.). Application-to-Repository (When an application that uses content connects to a content repository) Institutional repositories (when an application interacts simultaneously with multiple content repositories by integrating the results into a single user interface)

In such a changing environment, in which the fastest and the best at adapting to new trends become the leader of the sector, having the ability to restructure business processes is a competitive advantage that not only allows you to meet your goals, it also guarantees the survival of the organization in the long term.

With OpenKM the company can update the definition and execution of business processes in an efficient and coordinated manner.

Critical business transactions can be maintained, updated and monitored through the OpenKM communication tools. Personnel in charge of network monitoring, server monitoring, databases or monitoring of critical applications or systems, can maintain communication in real time through the chat integrated into the document manager. They can add notes, metadata or categorize essential business documents. Make sure that protocols or business processes are always fulfilled, thanks to the automation of processes.

If there is any doubt regarding the last update of a business process, which affects the quality of the service or the degree of satisfaction of the end user; through the version control (Historical), you can see the contributions of each user and recover previous versions. In addition, if the business transaction is of particular relevance, the user can subscribe to the content, so that he will receive notifications every time the transaction is subject to a change.

The Relations section is used to see in a simple glance, the links that these transactions maintain with other processes. The Forum section, linked to the business transaction or critical application monitoring, offers a space for the exchange of opinions or evaluations, to users who work in the service. Moreover, in the Wiki section, you will find the sources and resources that have been taken into account when developing the protocol to apply the monitoring of the process. It is beneficial to know where to start when rethinking workflows, from the origin. The OpenKM document management system includes a workflow engine that allows the definition and execution of the most sophisticated processes.

The OpenKM digital signature client can be used to show the compliance of managers or even clients, with changes, updates or decisions made. Moreover, through the search engine, we can search for any relevant information based on a multitude of criteria. Not only could we retrieve documentation related to a user's level of satisfaction, or on key indicators of service level or application performance based on the file name, but also for any word that is part of the body of the document, or for the author, by date range. Also depending on its location, the type of file it is, the category, or the metadata of the document. And if you have to arrange a meeting, invite those responsible for the service and advise them to review the documentation for the meeting, the OpenKM task manager can be the ideal solution to maintain the coordination of the teams.

With OpenKM the organization will have the security that the hardware and software structure is maintained in such a way that the company maintains a level and quality of service suitable for the offering of products and services that results in the improvement of the quality of the user experience and customer satisfaction.