Global businesses thrive on the quality of their digital products and continuous innovation. From newer technology to high competition to intensified customer expectations, the Testing Services industry that helps in the QA of digital products has become increasingly vulnerable. Evolution in business started with mapping supply to demand and moved on to economies of scale, where increased production blended with a lower cost per unit gave rise to the ‘cost advantage’ to companies.
Often, customers were faced with the predicament of paying for what they really don’t need. With limited outreach and increased monopoly in the market, customization in many sectors never saw daylight.
The past decade has witnessed increasing customer participation, change in global marketing trends, and gauging consumer demands and expectations taking center stage. Most businesses are facing the harsh reality of either disrupting or getting disrupted.
Transition into Specific Demand-Based Supply
Mobile applications, digital products, and the internet of things have become gateways to quicker access both for customers and enterprises today. Technology has opened up the Pandora’s box for businesses online that need to keep pace with the changing needs of their customers through customized digital subscriptions that transform business activities, processes, and their underlying models.
Specific demand-based supply has transitioned technology-enabled industries and this trend is spreading like wildfire.
Airbnb and Uber are classic examples of this transition. These two privately held global businesses offer hospitality and commutation services that are accessible via websites and mobile applications. Here, the customers need to pay only for the services that they use/need and have the liberty of canceling them ahead of time. The businesses do not own the property or the vehicle and charge a small commission from the property owner/driver.
This concept is becoming increasingly popular globally because of the level of flexibility, transparency (tracking option), and the hyperscaling opportunity that it offers to the customers and the service providers.
Digital Transformation and its Impact on Software Testing
Software testing is no exception to the context of specific demand-based supply also called ‘subscription-based services’ and the concept of ‘payment customization’.
Today, Digital businesses that have a value-driven approach, primarily have the following goals:
- Creating value in new frontiers of business
- Creating value in the processes that realize the vision of customer experience which include:
- Proactive decision-making
- Contextual interactivity
- Real-time automation
- Journey-focused innovation
- Building foundational capabilities that support the entire structure which include changing mindsets, culture, systems, and data architecture
In this blog, we will delineate the impacts of this digital transformation on the demand and supply framework of Software Testing Services by referring to the McKinsey’s framework. Before that, let’s take a classic example to demonstrate the shaping up of supply based on demand that can be related to the economic essentials of digital strategies in Software Testing.
The Demand and Supply Framework to Understand the Digital Disruption
The McKinsey’s framework below demonstrates the shift in the overall demand and supply and applies it to the software testing industry. The framework has 6 components. The 3 components above the axis explain the modest degree of change while the ones below the extreme degree of change.
Exhibit 1: Digitization can Disrupt Industries when Demand, Supply, or Both are impacted.
Modest Degree of Change
Undistorting Demand and Unconstraining Supply Help in Creating New Markets for Software Testing
Undistorting demand relates to the dynamic desires or needs of a customer. Newspapers/blogs, for example, offer tailor-made content to different sections of the society and different demographics of the country by dispensing the content and tuning them based on customer needs
Unconstraining supply is what Airbnb is currently doing by enabling the new service providers coming into the market who have additional space to share
Extreme Degree of Change
An Extreme Degree of Change Can Be Introduced in The Industry by Understanding the Current Value Chains of Businesses, Processes, and Methodologies, and Offering New Value Propositions Using Scalable Platforms
Reimagining the business systems will mean understanding the complete value chains, incorporating the customer feedback, simplifying the distribution channels, and developing a new structure
The offering involves enriching the service with the required information and practical results
Using the hyperscaling platforms such as IBM’s Watson, Google’s Tensor flow, etc., the way the current testing artifacts are produced can be changed
With increasing software complexity, delivery and release cycles have been decreased dramatically through this extreme degree of change
Qualitics as a knowledge leader in the software engineering and QA realm has exercised this extreme degree of change by reimagining software testing services and has materialized this idea into a revolutionary concept called “Curated Crowdsourced Testing”. Here, Qualifly the platform powered by Qualitics acts as the intermediary channel that propagates specific demand-based supply to registered companies for their product testing needs through a trusted channel that connects them to global test service providers who are also registered on the channel after they are approved by Qualitics.
Challenges that Give Rise to Software Testing Disruption
Transforming Software Testing is a necessity considering the volatility in customer requirements and competitor strategies. This involves increasing the automation rates and implementing more exploratory testing for better risk coverage since defective software costs businesses dearly. Test automation requires test data management, service virtualization, etc. Many companies today either do not have the supporting infrastructure or the time to implement test automation because of which they experience an average of 20% direct cost overruns of software testing in developing a market-ready digital product.
The major contributing factors to cost overruns include:
- Businesses expenses for the unutilized capacity of in-house testers while the products are being developed
- Long-term service contracts and uneven demand
- The absence of output-based and consumption-driven testing service plans
- Scalability and flexibility of testing mobile applications and digital products in short notice
- Scaling challenges of organizations with in-house testing capabilities
- Frequently changing technology trends by testing organizations and vendors
The Workaround and the Way Forward- ‘Qualifly’ Powered by Qualitics
Qualifly which is the brainchild of knowledge leaders at Qualitics is a SaaS-based Opensource platform that enables confident digital product launches by companies through exploratory testing backed by AI and automation. Crowdsourced Testing with the twist of trusted networks is the core concept of this initiative.
Through Qualifly, subscription-based testing allows companies and Testing Service Providers to come together and realize their individual objectives through various testing plans. This way, a more customer-centric approach is promoted with customers only paying for the services that they choose and testers bagging projects based on their convenience.
Companies that have testing bandwidth can also become service providers and get continuous business by signing up on the platform.
The advantages of the Qualifly Assurance are:
- Quick Turnaround Time
- Premium-quality products
- Saving up on CAPEX and OPEX
- Budget-based testing services for SMEs
- Curated Crowds – Only certified and approved Testing Service Providers are taken on-board
- Promising Pipeline – Continuous work for Testing Service Providers
- Consumption-driven business structure
- Expertise in consulting and testing executions
- A core dynamic team that takes innovation and value-addition seriously
- Standardized unit costs for various types of testing efforts
The platform also aims to host 30% of its infrastructure on a Cloud this year which will be the target market for crowdsourced solutions. Qualifly has been garnering a lot of attention because of its novelty, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
To know more about QUALIFLY “Qualifly Assurance is the New QA” contact us today.
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