Modern software development companies are constantly trying to make their products better. Building and deploying top-notch features ahead of the competition is a primary goal for any software-related business. Perhaps one of the most important features companies can offer but often overlook or find hard to deliver effectively is a smooth end-user experience and great overall web performance.

Cox Automotive is a global company with over 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents. The company, which houses Kelly Blue Book, Autotrader, and 25 other brands, was built through acquisitions. Its IT Operations team is tasked with bringing them together under the Cox Automotive umbrella and ensuring “a good, consistent experience” for its customers worldwide.

A VPN, allows remote employees to create a secure traffic connection to the corporate network. These connections essentially tunnel from a computer or mobile device through a VPN server, often through the public Internet. VPN technology has been around since the mid-1990s, but its usage is now going mainstream due to Covid. As Covid accelerates, it means new monitoring challenges for IT amid a high VPN adoption.

Have you ever tried to search for a leadership position in IT that’s dedicated exclusively to employee experience, sometimes listed as end user experience or Digital Employee Experience (DEX)? I’m not talking about a CXO (Chief Experience Officer) role outside of IT—that position is usually advertised for customer experience or employee communications and human resources. I’m talking strictly enterprise IT.

At the start of the pandemic, IT organizations had to undergo radical changes to support remote work. Given the urgency to shift to remote operations, IT admins opted for band-aid solutions to retain business continuity and stay connected to the core of their networks from remote locations. But now, many organizations are moving toward hybrid workforce options with employees choosing to work from both their home and office locations.

Exploring the Internet and accessing SaaS applications via a web browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge is commonplace today. At times, end-users visiting apps through multiple channels face performance issues of slow Wi-Fi (Network) speed, increased page response times (TTFB), and long page load times resulting in end-user dissatisfaction and frustration.

Even with work almost entirely digital, there is still a considerable gap between the optimized and seamless services IT teams aim to deliver, and the actual quality of the digital experiences of employees.