Software inefficiencies: tackle them to improve your business ROI

In today's digital world, software has become the core of most business operations. From data management to customer interaction, software efficiency plays a crucial role in the success of any organisation.

At a time when technology infrastructures are growing exponentially, the impact of software inefficiencies is multiplying at an alarming rate. The consequences are visible:

• service outages,

• long repair times, and

• a user experience that suffers as a result.

And how do companies face this challenge? They often choose to increase the capacity of their infrastructure, but at what cost? In fact, roughly 50% of the software renewed every year is developed inefficiently, which ends up affecting resource consumption and, ultimately, customer satisfaction.

In software development, efficiency and performance are often pushed aside by other goals, such as maintainability and reliability. In other words: no incidents, and if the software has to change, future changes should be as quick and easy as possible. However, this lack of attention to performance and efficiency is what causes inefficiencies in software code, because neither in the early design stages nor during programming does anyone analyse how users will really use it and how a new software component may affect the other applications.

Can software inefficiencies be avoided?

Yes, but the root of the problem is the lack of realistic performance testing: it would require a replica of the production environments to simulate production volumes, load and cases, which would mean doubling IT costs. Instead, some organisations focus on evaluating the static quality of their code, but in our experience this only detects 15–20% of inefficiencies and gives no information about their impact on costs or service.

By contrast, thanks to our solid knowledge and experience, at Orizon we can evaluate many valid alternatives for each specific situation and propose the best solution. We make simple but very effective changes that have a significant impact.

The combination of no performance testing and the criteria used to develop software results in applications with thousands of inefficiencies. This means paying extra for IT infrastructure and accepting degraded response times. It is true, though, that while code may contain many inefficiencies, many of them have no impact, because their consumption or duration is minimal. And our ability to identify, automatically and every day, the elements that are affecting your costs or service quality lets us act very efficiently.

How can you detect the inefficiencies that really affect your IT installation?

Identifying the inefficiencies that have an impact is a challenge, because of the complexity of the systems and the widespread focus of operations departments on keeping availability high and reducing recovery times (MTTR). Performance has taken a back seat, so nobody monitors whether there are increases in time or consumption linked to inefficiencies in the code. Add to that the fact that software code is constantly changing, with average turnover of 25–50%, depending on the type of company and technology.

At Orizon, performance is our main concern, and detecting and addressing these inefficiencies is exactly what we do. We not only identify the existing inefficiencies in the code (known as “technical debt”), and only those that really have an impact on the installation, whether in cost or service; we also monitor the new inefficiencies that appear as the software keeps changing, by watching each component after it goes into production (what is known as dynamic software evaluation).

Going beyond detection

But detecting inefficiencies is not enough. It is essential to identify the source of the problem, triage it, analyse it in detail and propose concrete, clear solutions down to the line of code. This lets the development team apply the fixes quickly and without affecting business priorities.

Watching over software inefficiencies has a clear ROI. It can reduce IT infrastructure costs by up to 35% and improve response times by 25–40%.

In a constantly evolving technology world, identifying and addressing these inefficiencies is not only essential to improve efficiency and business ROI; it has also become more and more challenging in a complex, fragmented software development environment. In the coming years, with the arrival of technologies such as artificial intelligence, ChatGPT or low code, this concern will grow, unless companies take proactive steps to manage and optimise their software efficiently.

Are you ready to optimise your software and increase your business ROI?