The travel industry relies on technology. Therefore, it is crucial to have the appropriate metrics in your API performance KPI report.
Due to the importance of IT infrastructures in the travel industry, it is critical companies’ approach to technology is extremely thorough. The volume of data handled by the sector is enormous and growing, so IT departments need to be confident that their systems can handle the traffic.
When devising an IT strategy, business leaders need to make sure solutions are scalable, cost-effective and robust. Furthermore, they need to make sure the systems in place promote a democratized approach to data, where all employees can rapidly access accurate information. Moreover, the functionality of an IT infrastructure does not only have an internal impact; it can also affect the customer experience. For instance, a system failure can lose sales. In addition, if a system underperforms, companies can lose custom to competitors with more sophisticated booking interfaces.
The impact of poor IT performance is clear. To keep this pivotal business infrastructure up and running, IT managers need to have a comprehensive overview of their machinery. Therefore, rigorous API performance testing is of utmost importance. Below are the KPIs to cover in your businesses’ reporting.
1. Timeouts, crashes, and errors
As already mentioned, timeouts lose custom. Not only do system crashes and errors aggravate customers, they lead to missed opportunities to sell ancillary products. Aside from these short term effects, poor system performance can seriously damage a brand’s reputation in the long term.
2. Response times
Engineers measure response times to make sure systems are operating within acceptable boundaries. This can help the IT department detect faults, ensure service level agreements are met and determine network, server, and bandwidth requirements. In relation to this aspect of your KPI report, it is possible to extract two distinct metrics: the average, which indicates overall performance; and the real-time measurement, which is used to monitor peaks and troughs. Both these metrics enable IT managers to identify the symptoms associated with errors and indicate overall customer experience. Therefore, this aspect of a KPI report is an excellent predictive tool.
3. Volume of requests
Travel companies need powerful IT systems to handle an enormous volume of searches, requests and web traffic. Consumers are accustomed to a seamless purchase journey, so companies need to ensure they can generate an instant response. Quantifying system stress thresholds is central to maintaining a high-functioning IT infrastructure. For instance, controlling the volume of requests and responses is key to analyzing different sales segments. By monitoring traffic emanating from different clients and services, IT departments can better understand how to optimize systems to handle traffic.
Why a comprehensive IT KPI report is crucial
Business leaders need to have a complete overview of an IT infrastructure’s performance. Managers need to be able to monitor performance in real-time, to make sure engineers have the correct data at the right time to take appropriate action. Operational performance data is crucial to IT departments, much in the same way business insights are crucial to the sales team. Therefore, a robust API performance KPI report is central to providing a high-functioning service to customers.
