APMdigest asked experts from across Application Performance Management (APM) and related markets what they see as the most important way application performance impacts the business. The second installment covers some of your key corporate goals.

Start with 16 Ways Application Performance Impacts the Business - Part 1

5. REVENUE

In the APM reviews written by IT ops managers and application owners on IT Central Station, the most critical impact that app performance has on business is revenue loss. These reviewers usually give five stars to the APM solutions that help them reduce outages for revenue-generating applications.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

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When applications that support key business processes are slow or not readily available, those applications adversely impact the bottom line in the form of lost revenue and credibility to many businesses. The more directly an application correlates to revenue, the more critical the performance of that application becomes. Applications that perform better lead to better customer loyalty and, as a result, increased revenue.
Arun Balachandran
Senior Marketing Analyst, ManageEngine

Performance is key for business success. A second in extra response time for loading a page or form in an application can result in loss in revenue. Managing and improving the performance of applications using the right tools is critical for my clients' success!
Coen Meerbeek
Online Performance Consultant and Founder of Blue Factory Internet

6. BRAND REPUTATION

Application performance has a direct correlation to brand trust and brand loyalty. A consumer's perception of a brand is directly affected by their initial impressions when engaging the brand. It has been shown that the effectiveness of the delivery of the application content has a meaningful impact on the consumer's opinion.
Frank Yue
Director of Application Delivery Solutions, Radware

If application performance is chronically slow, your customers may pass harsh judgment on the brand you're trying to sell. Either, directly by inundating you with complaints creating bad press or indirectly by abandoning your site in favor of one that is much faster and more intuitive to use. The first scenario will be in your face and require you to take immediate action to remedy, but the second is more insidious and you may not realize it is happening until it's too late.
Larry Dragich
Director of Customer Experience Management at the Auto Club Group and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn.

In today's digital world, your apps ARE your brand. And since application performance powers every customer and users' digital experience, poor performance translates into brand degradation, lost business and lost opportunity. That's why APM is evolving into digital performance management, where business teams are able to benefit from real-time analytics and collaborate with IT and Dev to optimize application performance, deliver great customer experiences and drive increased business results.
Erwan Paccard
Director, Solution Marketing, Dynatrace

The most important way application performance impacts the business is your reputation! In our increasingly connected, 24/7 world, customers have come to expect that they can find, purchase, play games, do virtually anything at any time of the day. In order to fulfil this expectation companies must have in place websites, applications and systems that are not only available, but perform well 24/7. As several recent high profile cases have shown, failure to ensure good application performance is not only costly in straightforward loss of sales, at the moment when customers encountered a poor experience, but will ultimately hurt your business in the long term through lasting reputational damage.
Frank Puranik
Senior Technical Specialist, iTrinegy

The most important way application performance impacts the business is organizational reputation. When your applications are performing poorly, it can negatively impact an organization's ability to execute, ultimately putting the business' performance and reputation on the line.
Aaron Kelly
VP of Product Management, Ipswitch

Customers and users expect sub one-second response times today. Anything longer reflects on the brand. And that impacts everything from revenue to brand equity to share price.
Kevin Surace
CEO, Appvance

7. BRAND PERCEPTION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We now live in a world with 50MB broadband at home and 4G LTE on the move. As a consumer, there is literally no excuse for slow application performance from any business you interact with. Social media now gives consumers a voice to influence the network around them, and in one tweet they can impact the buying decisions of thousands. Application Performance isn't just about revenue and not being able to process transactions, it's about brand perception and identity within a market where every consumer interacts together online.
Steve Burton
Chairman, VP of Product Marketing, Moogsoft

8. COMPETITIVENESS

Users, internally and externally, have a dizzying array of choices. By not leveraging monitoring and leveraging insights into digital business execution your competition can and often will gain a competitive edge. This trend is inclusive of, but goes beyond performance and into the core of digital business.
Jonah Kowall
VP of Market Development and Insights, AppDynamics

Competitiveness — High-performing applications offer 24/7 reliability while constantly adapting to meet market needs. IT organizations with well-aligned Dev, QA and Ops teams are in a better position to respond to business needs quickly with reliable releases, and to capture productivity gains and market share.
Krishnan Badrinarayanan
Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Riverbed

In an age where every company is a tech company, leaders are increasingly realizing that improving app performance isn't just about noise suppression or decreasing MTTR. It's about what these things mean for your brand and how they impact the customer experience. Service availability and performance directly impact reputation, brand equity and customer trust, so companies need to start thinking about app performance as their single largest competitive differentiator.
Dan Turchin
VP Product, Big Panda

Read 16 Ways Application Performance Impacts the Business - Part 3, covering the internal impacts of application performance on your teams.