Application Monitoring for a Smoother Period Close in Financial Services

One of the key ways we support our financial services customers is by helping keep the month-end close process running smoothly. Issues within complex application environments can sometimes slow the close process without being readily apparent to the business. To help identify these issues earlier, Rackspace has developed application monitoring scripts and put a monitoring process in place. The process helps surface potential problems so our applications support team can begin addressing them proactively, before they affect the close.

How application monitoring works

Rackspace application monitoring scripts can be scheduled to run nightly as cron jobs in a customer’s production environment. They monitor standard Oracle transactional interfaces and workflows to identify potential issues and generate a report that is emailed to a predefined distribution group for review.

The applications support team reviews these reports nightly and can begin working proactively when issues are identified.

The scripts are non-invasive and can help customers:

• Resolve problems proactively
• Support a smoother, more timely period-close process
• Reduce spikes in support tickets during period close
• Reduce the number of critical issues that emerge during period close
• Create a better experience for business users

See application monitoring in action

The following example shows how Rackspace used application monitoring together with functional support to help a customer improve its period-close process.

Client: Manufacturing company

Challenge: Uncosted transactions were preventing the customer from closing inventory periods, but the issue was not readily visible during day-to-day operations. As a result, the customer was unable to close its fiscal period for months and had as many as six to eight inventory periods open at a time.

Solution: Rackspace helped the customer address the backlog of open inventory periods while application monitoring identified uncosted transactions nightly, giving the applications support team visibility into issues that could affect period close.

Value: The customer went from having up to eight inventory periods open at a time to closing each period on time, ultimately reducing the period-close cycle to just a few day

See what application monitoring surfaces

Here’s a sample of an application monitoring report. Findings are organized into three main categories: Resolution Required, Workflow Issues and Resolution Recommended.

Taking action on our findings

The information in the report helps our applications support team identify and resolve existing issues. Over time, the application monitoring process also helps Rackspace build a repository of solutions that can be applied for the same customer and across our Application Services customers.

We also review the resolution process with the customer to identify potential patching requirements, process changes and other opportunities to improve how their environment operates.

Extend monitoring to your environment

Along with standard application monitoring, Rackspace works with customers to identify opportunities for custom monitoring that can support their specific production environments. The following example shows how that can work in a 24x7x365 manufacturing environment.

Client: Manufacturing company

Challenge: The customer operates 24x7x365, making it critical for its ASCP plan to run and complete on time. When the plan does not complete as expected, work is not released on time and production can be affected.

Solution: Rackspace worked with the customer to create a monitoring script and standard operating procedure (SOP). The script checks for errors in the program and confirms that it is running as expected. When an issue is identified, an email notification is sent to the Rackspace support team and a critical ticket is automatically created in the ticketing system. The ticket references a knowledge base article containing the SOP for troubleshooting and resolving the issue.

Value: Less downtime caused by errors and more efficient issue tracking.

Use monitoring to improve over time

Application monitoring can help organizations address issues proactively, reduce spikes in issues during period close and support a smoother, more timely close. It can also help identify breakdowns in business processes and inform potential process improvements across different functional areas.

Learn more about how Rackspace Technology helps banking and financial services organizations improve operations, manage risk and support their evolving technology needs.