5 ways Digital Assurance and Innovation can go hand in hand

The rapid sweep of digital technologies has enveloped every segment of our lives thereby enriching it considerably. Business enterprises have adopted digitization to derive benefits like streamlining processes, enhancing customer experience, breaking departmental silos, expanding markets, diversifying into new areas and achieving ROI among others.

The digitization process involves developing applications with multiple interfaces to social media platforms, mobility, and big data. These interfaces, on their part, are leveraged by companies through the mobile app route. The primary objectives of businesses are to make a strong online presence by developing websites or mobile apps and using them to deliver products or services quickly at cost effective rates. However, digitization, notwithstanding the many advantages, has its pitfalls as well. This is mainly to do with the quality of products and services delivered through the online route.

Why Digital QA?

With the rise in competition, companies are under pressure to develop high quality apps quickly. The race to be in the market before others has led to the market being flooded with poor quality apps. This situation is unacceptable given the possibility of cyber criminals making good with sensitive customer information and the potential to lower the credibility of businesses. To tackle the challenges of maintaining competitiveness, securing the apps, shortening the release cycles and achieving ROI, companies are taking recourse to digital assurance & testing.

Digital assurance too has undergone a significant transformation to keep with the times. It is no longer about merely validating the quality of an application post the development phase but removing the glitches right at the development stage itself. The ultimate aim is to deliver a great user experience, which in the increasingly competitive market helps to establish the brand. The shift left strategy of digital assurance, besides freeing the product of glitches, helps in shortening the product lifecycle and promoting innovation. Let us find out the five ways in which digital quality assurance & innovation can go hand in hand.

1. Implementation of smart technologies: Digitization has enabled the use of smart technologies like AI, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), big data, predictive analysis, and virtual reality among others. However, the success of these technologies depends on validating their quality right at the development stage. This is of utmost importance given the interface of these technologies with multiple platforms, devices, frameworks, and networks. For example, implementing IoT would mean developing devices with built-in sensors and other electronic equipment. And should any of the sensors malfunction the quality of the whole system can get compromised. Hence, the role of digital QA in identifying and eliminating glitches at the very beginning.
2. Using analytics for management: An important part of delivering a better user experience is working on the feedbacks from customers. These can be obtained through websites, apps and social media accounts of businesses. The feedbacks throw light on the areas of improvement of products/services and help companies to strategize and deliver. Moreover, by using predictive analytics companies can study past user behaviour and accordingly, customize products and streamline their delivery mechanism. A robust digital QA service can help in realizing the benefits of predictive or prescriptive analysis by validating the quality of an application early on during its development.
3. Leveraging big data: Digital assurance solutions can lead to the development of next-gen platforms thus enabling a seamless way of data integration. The presence of quality data helps to draw meaningful inferences as far as strategizing is concerned. High quality data mostly related to customers is generated at the application’s interface with multiple channels. These should be validated at every step of the way to ensure their security and integrity. And if not done in right earnest, the digital transformation initiatives taken by a business can get derailed.

#4 Focus on Quality Engineering: With the criticality of quality in ensuring the success of an application in the market, the focus is more towards leveraging quality engineering. Thus, instead of making the application glitch free post development, quality engineering harps on continuous testing, innovation and delivery throughout the product’s lifespan.

#5 Working on the cloud: The increased cost of developing an online product has prodded businesses to leverage the cloud platform. This has precluded the need for businesses to buy costly software or installing advanced systems. By moving its resources to the cloud platform, be it public, private or hybrid, businesses can reduce costs and enhance the user experience. Digital assurance services, on their part, can help to detect and eliminate glitches in the cloud ecosystem thus enabling scalability, performance, security, and compatibility.

Conclusion

One of the important outcomes of implementing digital assurance services is the thrust towards innovation. This leads to the development/delivery of better quality products/services and enhancing the user experience.

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, Global Leaders in Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at Cmmi-Svc v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also Iso 9001:2015 & Iso 27001:2013 certified.