Benefits: faster issue resolution and a better customer experience
Some of the ways AppResponse has kept the business running smoothly:
Convincing a credit agency its application was slow. Over the weekend an application team told Hurst that one of the three credit agencies was taking longer than usual to return applicants’ credit scores and histories. The agency initially insisted its application was fine—pinning the blame on the network. But by filtering the weekend’s packets by time period, Hurst presented proof that the application was running six seconds slower than usual. Persuaded by the data, the agency fixed the problem.
Giving a vendor the data needed for troubleshooting. When OneMain’s server team reported slow server performance to its Linux vendor, the vendor requested 10 minutes of packet data—roughly 30GB. With AppResponse, OneMain quickly filtered out those packets and sent them as a single 30GB file. “Our other tools limit file size,” Hurst explains. “Without AppResponse, we would have had to send more than 100 files. AppResponse reduced a 2-hour chore to just five seconds.” After receiving the file from AppResponse, the vendor quickly resolved the issue.
Isolating the cause of slow electronic-signature application performance. Multiplied by a million transactions, even a 10-millisecond slowdown in the e-signature application can interrupt OneMain’s business. “With AppResponse, we can immediately see whether an emerging problem originates in the network or the application—even if the problem just started,” says Hurst. “With other tools we can’t pinpoint the source unless the problem takes place at the same time for a number of days.”
Microburst analysis. At one point Hurst suspected that certain network devices were causing bottlenecks, and was puzzled when another network-monitoring tool reported device utilization at just 50%. Hurst checked again with AppResponse, which analyzes packets in 1-millisecond intervals—not 1-minute or 5-minute intervals like other tools. “AppResponse revealed what other tools could not—that capacity sometimes maxed out for 15 seconds or even one second,” says Hurst. Upgrading the devices eliminated the bottlenecks.
Isolating the cause of voice quality issues. OneMain Financial’s voice network is generally very stable. On the rare occasions when latency affects quality, AppResponse quickly narrows down the problem to the service provider or the router so the right team can get to work.