By Brad Wisdom, EVP Technology
Your digital banking solution can have all the bells and whistles, but without a record of strong performance — such as high availability, stability, and resiliency — a robust feature set simply doesn’t matter. Consumers and business users want to feel confident they can access their accounts and conduct business whenever it is convenient for them. They want a reliable, secure platform that just works, one that enables them to transact with the speed and convenience they’ve come to expect from online and mobile banking channels.
Availability is at the center of any performance discussion, whether for your digital banking solution or other software impacting your user base, and when slowdowns or outages occur, users notice. News of a digital banking outage can spread like wildfire, with news media picking up stories from complaints posted online. One credit union’s recent digital banking outage and subsequent performance issues persisted for weeks, for example, with members repeatedly voicing concern and frustration on local news segments. The reputational damage suffered by this financial institution may be difficult to overcome.
The lesson for every financial institution is clear: understanding your provider’s performance track record is critical. When it comes to availability, consider the following:
- Uptime percentage: Look for solutions with uptime exceeding 99.9%.
- Total downtime: How many total minutes of downtime have users experienced in the last year?
- Number of outages: How many different outages occurred?
- Response time: Once an outage occurred, how much time did it take the provider to restore the system (minimum, maximum, and average response time in minutes)?
- Data loss: Did the provider lose any data following an outage? How much? Were they able to restore it?
To learn more about key performance characteristics, download our white paper, Beyond Features and Functionality: Five Critical Questions to Ask When Evaluating Digital Banking Solutions.