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Partner & Enterprise Solutions Lead - Xpand IT

Elevating efficiency of business teams with Jira

Elevating efficiency of business teams with Jira

by Francisco Costa
2024-05-16
4 min
5 SECONDS-SUMMARY:
  • Using project management tools like Jira is crucial for elevating the efficiency of business teams by organising tasks and projects in a personalized manner;
  • This tool is useful for areas such as Human Resources, Marketing, and Customer Support. It facilitates the management of audits, recruitment, marketing campaigns, content creation, and customer complaints;
  • Jira promotes clear communication among all team members and automates repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more important activities.

Elevating efficiency, productivity, and collaboration are essential elements in a competitive and dynamic business reality. Business teams increasingly face the need to manage projects efficiently, ensuring that all stakeholders are involved and aligned with organizational goals.

In our current professional reality, we know resources are scarce – time, money, knowledge, etc. – and we need to employ efficient tools to support organisations with managing their work effectively via collaborative solutions.

As such, project management tools are central to the success of any organisation. Atlassian’s Jira Software, well-known by software development teams, is equally powerful for business teams. However, maximising the productivity of different business teams does not begin and end with implementing tools like Jira.

Achieving operational excellence is a journey where the first step should be assessing the challenges teams face, so it is possible to understand how to optimise their processes. This way, it is possible to map the tool according to the work methodologies that best suit the reality of these teams.

How Jira transforms business teams

Jira is a versatile collaboration platform that adapts to different contexts and organisational needs. One of its goals is to facilitate task management, from the simplest tasks to the most complex projects. Its flexibility allows for a complete customisation of different features, so it is possible to transform and support various work methodologies across different industries and departments, whether it’s Human Resources, Marketing, Finance, or others.

Jira, with its high adaptability and customisation options, helps transform the processes of different business teams:

Compliance:

  • Audit management: Measure and manage the progress of audits, including planning, execution, documentation of results, and recommendations – in real time and with the progress of different audits simultaneously visible.
  • Documentation management: Create, review and approve documentation related to specific regulations.

Human Resources (HR):

  • Performance: Configure and track performance evaluation cycles, recording feedback to define goals for employees.
  • Recruitment: Manage the recruitment process, from the different open positions, monitoring of on going applications and respective follow-up interview and selection stages.

Marketing:

  • Campaign management: Plan and monitor marketing campaigns, from the ideation to execution and the analysis of results.
  • Content management: Coordinate the creation, review, translation and publication of content, facilitating collaboration between various team members involved in the process (designers, content writers, reviewers, SEO specialists, translators, etc.).

Customer support teams:

  • Complaint management: Create, prioritise and monitor complaints to ensure the situation reported by the customer is followed through, from its opening to its resolution, guaranteeing a quick, efficient response.
  • Automation: Configure automation rules for highly common situations, such as complaint escalation rules, automatic notifications for pending situations and automatic status updates, to improve operational efficiency.

Jira has a wide range of features: at a more operational level, you can create tasks, set priorities, define delivery deadlines, assign different responsibilities and track the progress of different tasks.
On a collaborative level, one of main benefits of the tool is to facilitate and promote clear and effective communication among different members of a given team and department. Through features like comments, document attachments, mentions and real-time notifications, it is possible for all stakeholders to be updated with the latest information and decisions on specific projects.

This real-time monitoring is essential for teams to stay on track with delivery deadlines, prevents information from being dispersed over space and time, and avoids misunderstandings.

For team leaders, Jira promotes a completely cross-sectional view of all the tasks of a given project and empowers them to make more informed decisions based on task progress, team capacity, dependency with other departments, etc.

It is also possible for different business teams to create Kanban boards, containing customised information, giving a clear and direct view of the status of projects. Within these boards, you can then choose what type of information is displayed, whether it is who is responsible for the task, the deadline, dependencies between tasks and other category types, such as business area, budget, etc.

kanban-board

Example of a Kanban board with an overview of tasks and their status (to do, in progress, in review and done).

In addition, teams can build dashboards to serve different purposes. Project managers, for example, can configure dashboards that provide critical information about different projects. Whether it’s a list of pending tasks, the progress of different initiatives, imminent deadlines, or task distribution by employee or business area, dashboards can facilitate day-to-day management and inform decision-making.

jira-dashboard

Example of a personalised dashboard with information on a project: task count by priority, tasks distributed by status, sprints with associated effort rate per collaborator and completed tasks per sprint.

No less important is the ability to automate highly repetitive processes. In an era where efficiency is key, automation is crucial. Through automation, different business teams can configure Jira to perform certain actions automatically. Whether it’s updating a task status, assigning tasks based on different changes, sending notifications, or requesting approvals, automation allows employees to focus on delivering higher-value activities, raising team productivity.

These are just some of the features Jira currently offers teams, enabling them to centralise tasks and build a collaborative work platform focused on productivity, efficiency and transparency.

At Xpand IT, we believe that adopting Jira goes beyond implementing a project management tool: it involves questioning old processes that perpetuate inefficiency, discovering new work methodologies, and empowering different teams with the technology and solutions needed to enhance productivity, improve collaboration, and increase the quality of project delivery.

Contact us to support your team in this transformation process.

Francisco CostaElevating efficiency of business teams with Jira
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KI-basierte Innovation: Der Ansatz von OpenAI zur Modernisierung der Webentwicklung

KI-basierte Innovation: Der Ansatz von OpenAI zur Modernisierung der Webentwicklung

by Francisco Costa
2024-04-19
3 min
DIESER ARTIKEL IN 5 SEKUNDEN:
  • Künstliche Intelligenz revolutioniert die moderne Webentwicklung, indem sie personalisierte Erfahrungen ermöglicht, komplexe Probleme löst und benutzerfreundliche Prozesse verbessert, die in der digitalen Ära entscheidend sind.
  • Unternehmen, die künstliche Intelligenz nicht in ihre digitalen Lösungen integrieren, sehen sich mit geringerer Skalierbarkeit und Sichtbarkeit im Vergleich zur Konkurrenz konfrontiert, was sie auf dem Markt benachteiligt.
  • Künstliche Intelligenz-Tools erleichtern die Modernisierung von Websites, indem sie die automatische Erstellung von Inhalten ermöglichen, personalisierten Support über virtuelle Assistenten und Chatbots bieten, die Anpassung von Websites ermöglichen, Inhalte in mehrere Sprachen übersetzen und die Benutzererfahrung sowie die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Unternehmen verbessern.

Welche Auswirkungen wird der Einsatz von künstlicher Intelligenz auf die Entwicklung und Modernisierung von Produkten und Dienstleistungen im Internet haben? Im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung sind die Unternehmen von der Notwendigkeit betroffen, 100 % personalisierte Erfahrungen zu bieten, Lösungen für komplexe Probleme zu garantieren und Prozesse zu verbessern, die die Nutzung von Websites erleichtern.

Wenn man sich den Weg der Unternehmen ansieht, die keine KI in ihre digitalen Lösungen implementieren, stellt man fest, dass ihre Skalierbarkeit auf dem Markt und ihre Sichtbarkeit gegenüber ihren Mitbewerbern geringer ist, was sie in eine schwache Position bringt.

Die wichtigsten Herausforderungen und Einschränkungen in einem Markt ohne KI

Wenn es eine Veränderung gibt, die auf die Digitalisierung zurückzuführen ist, dann ist es die Nachfrage der Nutzer – das Ergebnis der Modernisierung, der die Nutzer ausgesetzt sind – und das ist der Grund dafür , dass die Nutzer, wenn sie Einschränkungen bei digitalen Produkten und Dienstleistungen feststellen, sich von einer loyalen Beziehung zu einem bestimmten Unternehmen lösen.

Laut Marco Iansiti und Karim R. Lakhani, Autoren des Buches „Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World“, ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, mit der Implementierung von KI datenzentrierte Strategien zu entwickeln, bei denen die Analyse eine grundlegende Rolle bei der strategischen Entscheidungsfindung spielt, um das Wachstum der Wirtschaft des Unternehmens und eine positive Kundenerfahrung zu gewährleisten.

Modernisierung von Websites mit KI

KI-Tools haben die Webentwicklung verbessert und die Tür zu einer lang ersehnten Realität geöffnet: näher am Nutzer zu sein. Durch die Förderung der Implementierung dieser Tools sind viele unserer Kunden in der Lage, in ihrem Geschäftsfeld an der Spitze zu stehen.
Wie wird dies in der Praxis umgesetzt? Es gibt einzigartige Anforderungen, die auf einer Website erfüllt werden müssen, wobei das Hauptaugenmerk z. B. darauf liegt, das beste Erlebnis zu bieten:

• Inhalt: bietet uns die Möglichkeit, Produktbeschreibungen, Artikel und Antworten auf häufig gestellte Fragen zu automatisieren.
• Virtuelle Assistenten und Chatbots: bieten sofortige und personalisierte Unterstützung je nach den Fragen des Nutzers, basierend auf zusammenhängenden Gesprächen, die der menschlichen Interaktion ähneln.
• Anpassung der Website: Entwicklung eines Modells, das lernt, das Nutzerverhalten zu analysieren, um den Nutzern ein personalisiertes Erlebnis zu bieten, wenn es um Inhaltsvorschläge geht.
• Übersetzung: bietet eine Übersetzung des Inhalts in verschiedene Sprachen, die dem Geschäftsfeld entsprechen.

KI-Anwendung für die Verkehrsanalyse

Haben Sie schon einmal darüber nachgedacht, wie viele Informationen Sie über das Verhalten eines Nutzers erhalten könnten, wenn Sie KI in Ihrem Unternehmen einsetzen? Dank der ständigen Weiterentwicklung sind wir heute in der Lage, das Wachstum von Unternehmen zu fördern und das Nutzererlebnis durch Verkehrsanalysen und digitales Verhalten zu verbessern.

Und wie? Im Grunde ist es ganz einfach. Durch den Aufbau präziser Modelle und klar definierter Ziele können wir Ihr Unternehmen zu einem Benchmark für den Nutzer und den Markt machen. Durch die Implementierung von KI in der Verkehrsanalyse können wir das erreichen:

• Segmentierung des Publikums: KI ermöglicht uns die Analyse von Verhaltensmustern und die Segmentierung des Publikums auf der Grundlage von Vorlieben, Browserverlauf und früheren Interaktionen.

• Personalisierte Empfehlungen: Dank guter Verkehrsanalysen können wir Inhalte präsentieren, die sich an den Interessen des Nutzers orientieren, die Relevanz der Angebote erhöhen und die Suche eingrenzen.

• Optimierung des Layouts und des Designs: Wenn wir verstehen, was der Nutzer will, können wir die Schnittstelle an seine Vorlieben anpassen und sie regelmäßig verbessern.

• Integration von Marketingkampagnen: Wir waren in der Lage, genügend Informationen zu sammeln und sie in bezahlten Kampagnen zu verwenden, was wiederum das Geschäft ankurbelte.

Wir können sehen, wie viele Informationen wir durch den Einsatz der richtigen Modelle gewinnen, und noch mehr, wenn sie die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöhen, informierte und durchsetzungsfähige Entscheidungen zu treffen, die uns einen Wettbewerbsvorteil und ein tiefes Verständnis dessen verschaffen, was unsere Nutzer suchen, konsumieren und erforschen.

Bei Xpand IT betrachten wir das Potenzial von KI in der moderne Webentwicklung aus einer ganzheitlichen Perspektive. Unser Ansatz konzentriert sich auf die kontinuierliche Überwachung in jeder Phase des Projekts, um eine Lösung zu entwickeln, die die Bedürfnisse des Kunden erfüllt; eine Lösung, die überwacht werden kann und sollte, damit sie regelmäßig und konsequent weiterentwickelt werden kann. Nehmen Sie Kontakt mit uns auf und informieren Sie sich über die individuellen Lösungen, die wir für Sie bereithalten.

Francisco CostaKI-basierte Innovation: Der Ansatz von OpenAI zur Modernisierung der Webentwicklung
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Effektives Team-Management: Produktivität und Zusammenarbeit mit Atlassian-Tools steigern

Effektives Team-Management: Produktivität und Zusammenarbeit mit Atlassian-Tools steigern

by Francisco Costa
2024-04-19
3 min
DIESER ARTIKEL IN 5 SEKUNDEN:
  • Gewährleistung der Effektivität von Teams erfordert Strategien und Werkzeuge für Projektmanagement. Organisationen sollten die Teamproduktivität priorisieren, indem sie motivierende Führung, transparente Kommunikation und klare Zielsetzungen sicherstellen.
  • In der aktuellen Wettbewerbsumgebung ist die Maximierung der Produktivität entscheidend. Das Produktökosystem von Atlassian, das Tools wie Jira Work Management umfasst, erleichtert den Workflow, die Zusammenarbeit und die Sichtbarkeit zwischen den Teams.
  • Die Tools von Atlassian bieten Anpassungsmöglichkeiten, verbessern die Kommunikation und gewährleisten eine größere Sichtbarkeit des Arbeitsfortschritts. Die Integration mit Produkten wie Confluence und Tempo Timesheets optimiert die Projektorganisation, Zusammenarbeit und Zeitkontrolle für ein solides und effektives Wachstum.
  • Entdecken Sie alle Strategien zur Maximierung von Produktivität und Zusammenarbeit zwischen Teams mit Atlassian-Tools.

Die Effizienz von Teams zu gewährleisten, kann eine Herausforderung sein, wenn man keine Projektmanagementstrategien oder -Werkzeuge anwendet. Die Unternehmen sind sich heute mehr und mehr der Notwendigkeit bewusst, die Produktivität ihrer Teams zu maximieren, denn dies ist der Grundstein für den Erfolg eines Unternehmens. Hier sind einige der Grundpfeiler:

• Motivierende Führung.
• Transparente Kommunikation.
• Positives Arbeitsumfeld.
• Klare Definition der Ziele.
• Zeitmanagement und Aufgabenverteilung.
• Geeignete Instrumente und Technologien.

Maximierung der Produktivität in Organisationen

Angesichts des zunehmenden Wettbewerbs in der Geschäftswelt wird es immer wichtiger, Werkzeuge einzusetzen, die die Produktivität und das Teammanagement maximieren, da sie die Katalysatoren für den von den Unternehmen angestrebten Erfolg sind.

Wenn Sie zum Beispiel 55 Aufgaben zu delegieren hätten, wie würden Sie sie verteilen? Oder wenn Sie Prioritäten setzen müssten? Dies sind einige der Fragen, die sich unsere Kunden stellen, wenn sie eine innovative Lösung für die Verwaltung ihrer Unternehmensteams suchen.

kollaborative-werkzeuge

Atlassian-Produkte für das Organisationsmanagement

Atlassian versucht, die Hauptschwierigkeiten bei der Verwaltung von Teams und der Maximierung der Produktivität zu überwinden, indem es das Potenzial seines Ökosystems von Produkten nutzt, die zur Verbesserung der Rentabilität der Arbeit zwischen Teams geeignet sind.

Jira Work Management ist eines der Produkte, die die Arbeitsabläufe zwischen den Teams verbessert und die Zusammenarbeit und Sichtbarkeit zwischen den Teams gewährleistet haben.

Ihre Integration bringt viele Vorteile mit sich:

  • Individuelle Anpassung an jeden Prozess oder Bedarf.
  • Verbesserte Kommunikation und Zusammenarbeit zwischen Teammitgliedern durch die Zuweisung von Aufgaben, Echtzeit-Kommentare und die Integration mit anderen Kommunikationswerkzeugen.
  • Bessere Sichtbarkeit des Arbeitsfortschritts und der Teamkapazitäten für Mitarbeiter und Management, was auch zu einem effizienten Ressourcenmanagement beiträgt.
  • Steigern Sie Ihre Produktivität, indem Sie Routineaufgaben automatisieren und die Arbeit intelligent organisieren.
  • Fähigkeit zur Integration mit anderen Produkten und Plattformen, um die Skalierbarkeit von Aufgaben zu erleichtern.

Wenn man diese Vorteile auf den Bankensektor überträgt, wird man feststellen, dass dies möglich ist:

  • Ausarbeitung spezifischer Projekte zur Einführung neuer Finanzprodukte mit detaillierten Angaben zu den einzelnen Phasen des Prozesses, Budgets und Zeitplänen.
  • Stärkere Kontrolle der Einhaltung von Vorschriften und Audits, um gute Sicherheits- und Datenschutzpraktiken zu gewährleisten.

Durch die Erweiterung des Potenzials dieses Produkts und seine Kombination mit Confluence – einem Produkt für die Zusammenarbeit und die Organisation von Dokumenten – erhalten Sie einen zentralen Speicherplatz für relevante Informationen über Projekte, Prozesse und interne Verfahren.

Während diese Tools integriert werden und ihr Potenzial entfalten, stellen Sie fest, dass es interessant sein könnte, Tempo Timesheets zu implementieren – eine Plattform für die automatische Zeiterfassung und die Erstellung detaillierter Workflow-Berichte, neben anderen damit verbundenen Tools – bei der Sie die Zeit kontrollieren können, die bestimmten Aufgaben zugewiesen wird.

Mit der Implementierung von Atlassian-Tools, die ein solides und effektives Wachstum unterstützen, und vielen anderen, die einen exzellenten Workflow garantieren, garantieren wir unseren Kunden eine deutliche Verbesserung der Rentabilität und des Team-Managements, die sie suchen. Kontaktieren Sie uns und entdecken Sie, wie Ihre internen Abläufe Ihnen den Vorsprung verschaffen können, den Sie in Ihrem Bereich benötigen.

Francisco CostaEffektives Team-Management: Produktivität und Zusammenarbeit mit Atlassian-Tools steigern
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Use Case: A digital experience in after-sales service

Use Case: A digital experience in after-sales service

by Francisco Costa
2022-09-20
4 min
5-SECOND SUMMARY:
  • In this article, we’ll explore how a retail company was able to improve its customer service using Dynamics 365;
  • How to turn an after-sales service into a digital experience.

After-sales services are one of the most critical parts of the buying experience. The trend is for companies to pay increased attention to their customers, thus bringing organisations closer to people.

After-sales service can be defined by all the interactions of a given customer after purchasing one of the organisation’s points of sale.

Case study

In this article, using a case study, we will take as an example a company in the retail sector to explain and detail all the needs and challenges encountered at this stage of the customer journey – the after-sales service.

Company analysis

Consider the situation the world has been going through in recent years. Imagine a company that grew a lot during the pandemic. Still, amidst the hustle and bustle of that growth, there was never the time and dedication to restructuring its internal processes to keep up. This is a company that dealt with its after-sales process using only Excel sheets, email boxes and the telephone to support customers on their journey. This quickly became unaffordable and was reflected in the relationship with its customers.

There were not, for example, SLA’s, knowledge bases, or even satisfaction metrics.

Challenge: AS IS Scenario

Suppose a customer has just arrived home on holiday after buying an automatic coffee machine. While unpacking the product one of the water tank parts was damaged, which caused frustration. The customer immediately went to the company’s website and noticed that the telephone service was only available on working days, between 9 am and 5 pm. Discouraged, continues searching the site and finds an e-mail address, which allows for greater flexibility in contacting customer support. The customer then decides to explain the situation by e-mail, including photographs of the damaged part.

However, the customer service department is overwhelmed with work and is unable to triage incoming emails. It is therefore only able to deal with the customer’s complaint one week after receiving it, without the customer having been given any information about the process during this time.

In turn, and because there was no reply, the customer sent back more emails, generating duplicates of the complaint.

In its response, the company indicated the steps to be taken so that the customer could receive the new part. To do this, the customer was asked to provide billing data, address, and product code and attach the invoice of the purchase – information that the company already had on its side, but too scattered to be useful.

Upon receiving the email, the customer sends the necessary information the next day, and the part arrives four days later.

With this scenario in mind, there are some fragilities:

  • Sense of unavailability.
  • Lack of feedback.
  • Long response times.
  • Customer dissatisfaction.
  • Generation of duplicate complaints.
  • Unconnected or searchable information silos.
  • Lack of mechanisms to measure customer satisfaction.
  • Disorganisation in internally performed functions.
  • Management lacks visibility of processes and/or team performance.

Solution: TO BE Scenario

To meet its Customer Service needs, the customer support department decided to opt for the Dynamics 365: Service and Customer Voice solution, to meet the needs of its customers. To create a digital experience in the after-sales service.

Dynamics 365 is a Microsoft business system which has two components: ERP, where techniques such as invoicing, stock management, and resource management, among others, are inserted, and CRM, for managing business processes, customer support, marketing, etc. The Service module aims to meet customer support needs, offering incident management functionalities, response agreements and knowledge bases, aiming at improving the customer’s visibility over the company. The Customer Voice component allows satisfaction surveys to be created and sent, as well as analysing of the information obtained from them.

To overcome the existing fragilities, the customer service system was configured where it is possible to manage incidents, agent allocation, service agreements (SLAs) and internal knowledge bases (for the team’s use) and external knowledge bases (for customers‘ consultation). After this rollout, the above scenario would play out as follows:

This time, the customer, realising there was a damaged part, has a FAQ page available, created from a knowledge base, where he/she can search for ‚Damaged Part‘. The customer quickly found an article with a specific address to report the situation, indicating that the process should be resolved within four working days. The customer sent an email to that address.

In turn, the company’s system automatically creates the incidence, which is given to the agent with the lowest number of incidences. This reduces the response time and ensures that the agent knows exactly what to do (because it has obtained this information from one of the knowledge bases). Unnecessary email exchanges with the customer are thus avoided.

As Dynamics 365 is a solution that adapts to the needs of the organisation, templates frequently used by agents for the various incidents were also configured. In this case, the agent only has to select the damaged part dispatch template, which will be automatically filled in with the customer’s information in the system.

After receiving the part and considering that the company has configured the sending of automatic surveys from its new system, a satisfaction form is sent to the client, to obtain information on the resolution of the problem that originated the incident.

Finally, since the system is based on a database with excellent quality information, management can finally obtain information about their teams‘ performances with the help of intuitive reports and dashboards.

This allows us to improve on the points mentioned above as follows:

  • Sense of constant follow-up, with the timely exchange of information.
  • Customers feel supported by the company, knowing that the company is aware of them, avoiding unnecessary exchanges of information.
  • Reduction of response times, thanks to the distribution of incidences by specialised groups of workers, and attention to their workload.
  • Team optimisation, as articles and templates are configured so that they can work more quickly and efficiently.
  • Elimination of duplicates, as the system, can identify repetitions.
  • A better reading of the business through the analytics provided by the system.

Visibility of customer satisfaction, through the surveys, sent out.

In short

At the end of the transformation, this company was left with an optimised and structured solution, which allowed it to scale its business to new heights, with a crucial step in building its client’s 360º vision. Excel is still part of the company in a data transaction format, but Dynamics 365 has become the daily work tool.

How Xpand IT can help you:

Our multidisciplinary team can assist in various components, from definition to the implementation of the solution. We leverage all the experience and know-how we have in different areas to offer the best approach, geared to your business. If you would like more information, please contact us.

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Francisco CostaUse Case: A digital experience in after-sales service
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Node.js: the JavaScript platform used by Netflix and Uber

Node.js: the JavaScript platform used by Netflix and Uber

by Francisco Costa
2019-03-21
3 min

The progressive and noticeable growth of JavaScript is hard to ignore. Over the years, this programming language has singlehandedly provided hundreds – if not thousands – of frameworks and libraries, helping developers and companies to create websites, portals, and interactive and agile applications, with modern interfaces. Adding the fact that JavaScript is completely independent from other platforms, easy to learn and supported by an ever-growing community, among many other advantages, it is easy to understand why.

However, for a long time, JavaScript was a language exclusively oriented towards client-side development and never managed to establish itself for backend purposes – at least until 2009, when the first version of Node.js was launched. For the first time in history, JavaScript became a viable alternative for backend solutions.

It is important to demystify the fear that many companies have about this alternative to more traditional backend solutions (Java, .NET, etc.) in the world of Enterprise applications, even though companies including Netflix, Trello, PayPal, LinkedIn, Uber, Walmart, NASA, Intel and Twitter have already successfully implemented Node.js in their infrastructures – and this list continues to grow each day.

For those who are not familiar with Node.js, it is important to highlight some of its biggest advantages:

  • Ideal for the construction of real-time applications;
  • Facilitates the programmer’s full stack vision in JavaScript (as both backend and frontend languages are the same);
  • Decreases development time, thanks to its full stack view;
  • Supported by a gigantic community that contributes new libraries and updates at an astonishing rate;
  • Extremely fast code execution;
  • Ideal in architectures oriented towards micro services.

We can now go back to what we really want to discuss: why should companies adopt Node.js for their applications? In a nutshell, because it was designed for large-scale applications, offering a modern perspective on how to develop applications with complex architectures.

How those capacities actually come to fruition is the most important aspect.

Scalability is essential for the vast majority of current corporate applications, and Node.js responds to that necessity by offering a base clustering module with load balancing on multiple CPU cores. Associating the clustering power with a single-threaded, non-blocking solution, specifically designed for events and callbacks, allows it to handle multiple connections simultaneously, processing millions of concurrent connections.

Being single-threaded is often regarded as a limitation because, theoretically, it can slow down the performance of the application, but that is nothing more than a myth. On solutions that are not oriented towards events, where multiple threads are necessary to deal with multiple requests, the number of parallel threads is limited. Node.js is completely free from these limitations. As long as there’s available memory and if the kernel allows it, we can effortlessly process any number of simultaneous requests.

Companies are also generally afraid to place their code in the Cloud, which would prevent the usage of the NPM (Node Package Manager). In order to address this issue, we have created a new Enterprise version that can be installed and maintained on companies’ own infrastructures, therefore preserving their internal module registry and complying with the strictest security requirements.

We also need to touch on the subject of long-term support. This will always be a priority for Enterprise solutions, but the truth is that Node.js also assures that very same support.

Each major version of Node.js will include active support for 18 months from the period it becomes eligible for LTS (Long Time Support), after which it will transition to a maintenance regime with a duration of 12 additional months. During this period, the version used will receive security updates and bug fixes, but new functionalities will not be added. In this way, we have addressed the potential problem that causes the absence of support for solutions developed with the help of Node.js, due to its lack of longevity.

node js

Based on all this information, the aforementioned companies decided to make their transition to this technology. What have they accomplished?

  • Netflix: a reduction of over one minute on buffering times.
  • LinkedIn: rebuilt the core of their mobile services with Node.js. Their application is currently running 20 times faster and benefits from a substantially better integration between backend and frontend. This was achieved while Node.js was just in its first year of development.
  • PayPal: migrated all their web applications from Java to JavaScript and Node.js and saw their programmers writing 33% less lines of code, using more than 40% less files and reducing by half the necessary time to build their applications (while also requiring less people). Response times have decreased by roughly 35%, which translates to an improvement of 200 ms in page creation times.
  • Uber: built their interpersonal system between drivers and passengers with Node.js, due to its fast response capabilities and massive power to process requests, along with the welcome ease and ability to have a distributed architecture.

I don’t want to plant the idea that Node.js is a “silver bullet”. It might not be the best solution for all cases, but it is always wise to evaluate your possibilities and understand the potential benefits of this technology.

Francisco Costa

Enterprise Solutions Lead

Francisco CostaNode.js: the JavaScript platform used by Netflix and Uber
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