8 business benefits of DevOps

DevOps is a movement heavily rooted in IT, that much is obvious — as are the many benefits it can provide. But what’s generally not talked about are the many benefits it contributes to the overall business side of things.

According to a survey that involved 1,770 senior business and IT executives worldwide, there are eight key business benefits that organizations experience after deploying standard DevOps practices. Those eight benefits are:

• Improved employee recruitment and retention
• Improved customer experience
• Higher customer satisfaction ratings
• A boost in employee and operational productivity
• Better quality for applications and products
• Better operational and process efficiency
• New business growth
• IT and development-related cost savings

Let’s break them down in greater detail.

Eight Business Benefits of DevOps Deployment

When adopted, DevOps can provide a multitude of benefits to the entire organization and operation, and not just IT-related projects.

This can be attributed to its overall structure. Successful DevOps practices honor three core principles: people, process and practices, and tools. So, when a DevOps organization’s ducks are in a row, it improves just about every aspect of a business.

1. Improved Employee Engagement

Hands down, employee engagement is one of the most important contributors to a company’s success. If your workers aren’t happy, productive and consistent with their work, both the output and general results are going to suffer.

High-performing and functional DevOps work environments are known to improve plenty of employee experiences. The movement fosters higher employee engagement and productivity, but also improved brand loyalty. And when your existing employees are happy, it bodes well for retention rates and encourages new talent to come your way.

Although it’s a bit dated now, Puppet’s 2016 “State of DevOps” report revealed that promoters working in DevOps-based organizations were 2.2 times as likely to recommend their company to a friend than those of low-performing DevOps companies.

2. Better Customer Experience(s)

The customer experience, or CX, is incredibly important to the successful operation of business because, without customers, there is no revenue. Improving the overall experience for your clients can boost loyalty, lifetime value, retention, profits and support channel success — and it can also shorten the sales cycle.

Because DevOps borrows inspiration from conventional development processes — fostering improved production support — the end product tends to get boosted in quality. This also offers much in the way of customer experience, by aligning the business and its operations to focus on optimal output.

It’s no surprise, then, that the CA Technologies study revealed 74 per cent of those surveyed agree that adopting DevOps improved their company’s CX.

3. Customer Satisfaction Gains

There’s a direct correlation between customer experience and satisfaction. The better and more positive the experience, the higher the satisfaction ratings. Naturally, that means, since DevOps improves CX, it also improves customer satisfaction, provided deployment is done appropriately.

The CA study found a 45 per cent improvement in each participant’s Net Promoter Score — quantified customer satisfaction ratings — that had deployed DevOps successfully.

4. Optimal Productivity and Output

More engaged and loyal employees mean higher productivity ratings, especially if they believe in what they’re doing. But it’s more than just that element contributing to the improved productivity.

In IT, teams are generally asked to do more with fewer resources, which is where automation tools come into play. They can automate and optimize existing processes that are repetitive and often rote. DevOps honours this approach even when applied to other aspects of a business. Automating common tasks frees up time for your workers, allowing them to focus on more important duties and invest more time into what they’re doing.

Respondents from the CA Technologies study said their companies experienced a 43 per cent boost in worker productivity after adopting DevOps.

5. Higher-Quality Applications and Products

The nature of DevOps fosters a culture of consistent and optimal production, naturally resulting in improved applications and products. In software development specifically, the idea is to cut down on the number of defects or bugs that appear in a product.

The CA Technologies study surveyed respondents that track product defects as a means to measure application quality — and 72 per cent indicated doing so. Out of those that do track defects, there was a 41 per cent improvement in defect rates for organizations that adopted DevOps.

6. Improved Operational and Process Efficiency

Since DevOps calls for reassessing and evolving existing processes and development operations, there’s a trend towards improved efficiencies. As organizations look to improve their entire operation, they migrate toward systems, strategies and practices that offer improved efficiencies. Common sense dictates that, overall, the entire organization would see efficiency boons as a result.

But there’s data to back up this change, too. The CA study reveals organizations that adopt DevOps see a 40 per cent improvement in the KPIs they track for operational or process efficiency.

7. New Business Growth and Opportunity Boons

As revenue and customer support increases, so do the opportunities. In particular, an organization with improved growth has a lot more capital to work with. That revenue can be rolled back into the business to further improve operations and systems. Plus, improved productivity and efficiency means that staff have more time and can be freed up to work on more successful, revenue-generating projects. It’s a win-win.

The CA Technologies study showed a 40 per cent improvement in revenue-based KPIs for organizations that embraced DevOps, meaning it commonly happens. The movement is really starting to look even more fruitful at this point.

8. IT Development and Operational Cost Savings

Finally, there’s the point to be made that all of the above improvements and optimizations help lower total costs. Improved productivity and output result in higher revenues, lower operational costs, and higher customer satisfaction ratings — which, in itself, boosts revenue even more. DevOps clearly fosters a perpetual cycle of improvement and growth.

The CA Technologies study reports that organizations experienced a 38 per cent decrease in IT-related costs after adopting DevOps. It highlights the fact that, no matter how the strategies are applied, cost improvements abound.

DevOps Adoption Is Good for Business

One can glean from the above benefits and information that DevOps as a whole is good for modern business. Perhaps the biggest benefit is the culture it helps foster: one where productivity, quality and general improvement are rampant.

In the end, however, it’s all about the product delivered to customers, and DevOps definitely helps on that front too. Companies that adopt the methodology report improved customer engagement, retention and satisfaction ratings. What more could you ask for?

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