Prognosis: Posts to the IR Blog cover a lot of ground and when it comes to Payments, there is much to learn!

How often do we check LinkedIn for updates on our favorite vendors? How frequently do we follow the links to stories referenced in the LinkedIn post and spend the time checking out the story behind the promotion? In today’s world it is hard to keep up with what is being continuously presented to us and yet, truth be known, oftentimes hidden in the stories being promoted are true gems.

“Payments are no longer purely transactional and leading businesses as well as merchant acquirers, are recognising that delivering on their service level agreements (SLAs) is critical in a fast and frictionless consumer experience.”

What this is highlighting is that in today’s highly-connected world, merchants everywhere have the ability to “offer customers various online or mobile channels through which to pay.” And in so doing, the merchants are frequently left relying on different approaches to monitoring systems to where it’s difficult to really quantify just how well SLAs are being achieved.

Someone, out there, connected to the internet, trying to shop online, may not be enjoying the same level of experience as someone inside a bricks-and-mortar establishment or even simply pursuing a transaction over the phone. With multiple systems and platforms it is easy to miss the importance of having a unifying solution that levels the playing field.

“Prognosis for Payments brings deep, real-time visibility to your entire payments environment with transaction monitoring. Real time monitoring offers unparalleled insights into payment processing, payments transactions and trends. With in-depth analytic and troubleshooting capabilities, you can optimize, improve customer experience, innovate and minimize risk.”

For many NonStop users, payments are synonymous with NonStop and payments are as much about real time transaction processing as they are about enhancing the customer experience. Let a user down with one experience runs the risk of seeing them move elsewhere for future transactions – it’s just so easy to let one experience end an association. In the competitive world of payments, keeping a user is paramount as the expense to gain new users continues to rise. With Prognosis for Payments you can monitor it all and ensure all SLAs are being met.

It is also important to recognize that it’s not just monitoring a collection of different servers but increasingly it’s less about the physical infrastructure and more about the collection of software resources determining successful business outcomes. According to Gartner in its press release Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Trends Impacting Infrastructure and Operations for 2019

“The focus of I&O leaders is no longer to solely deliver engineering and operations, but instead deliver products and services that support and enable an organization’s business strategy.

 “The question is already becoming ‘How can we use capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI), network automation or edge computing to support rapidly growing infrastructures and accomplish business needs?”

Gartner recommends that it’s now paramount that : “I&O leaders need to adopt an application-centric approach to serverless computing, managing APIs and SLAs, rather than physical infrastructures.”

Reports by reputed Industry Analysts as well as LinkedIn posts should never be the sole source for all information related to payments and SLAs, but occasionally the stories are worth checking out. On the other hand, with over 18,000 followers on LinkedIn, it cannot do any harm whatsoever to make sure you are staying informed about what your peers may be reading. If you have as yet not read this post to the IR blog, then check out this link – SLA management in complex payment environments

Prognosis continues to be a trusted solution for many payments providers today and for the many retailers where payments are an integral part of their business.  Should this topic of how best to monitor transactions generated by retailers be of interest to you don’t hesitate to reach out to your local IR contact; they would be only too happy to hear from you.

Written by the IR Team

Kevin Johnson,
VP Sales – Payments Performance Monitoring
www.ir.com