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Software Application Analytics Data
While designing a software application from scratch an important point to consider is the underlying database design’s capability of supporting future analytics. Most applications are designed on the basis of user requirements and more often than not the system requirements are overlooked in a rush to meet the delivery deadlines. Requirements such as “Capability to harvest numbers in future” are not explicitly stated nor can be expected to come from the end users.
This is one of the areas where the technology team can influence requirements and make this type of needs as part of the software requirements.
The advantages of having database design which takes care of analytics are as follows :
1. Ability to determine which functions are lightly used. There are times when a complicated piece of functionality is used so
rarely that it is not worth spending maintenance dollars on that functionality, the better option is to just sunset that functionality. It also enables the technical staff to determine which areas to concentrate on to exceed customer expectations by improving the response times/usability of highly used functionality.
2. Ability to determine which business rules are really effective and which are creating more work rather than making end users
efficient.
3. Ability to determine application usage peak times. This will enable the technical staff to schedule batch loads/downtimes in off peak
hours.
4. Ability to audit user actions. In most financial organizations this is a must as part of Compliance requirements.
5. Ability to apply advanced statistical techniques to drive business process improvement.
Capturing application numbers keeping the above advantages in perspective will directly translate into an application which is stable (because we can identify the pain points faster), robust (as it will remain effective as time progresses) and highly maintainable (by capturing and mining performance, usage numbers)