The need for QA Automation Services in the Media Industry

Like other industry segments, the media industry is transforming to improve the quality of its services. In a fast-changing world, disseminating information in real-time can be a challenge. The media has to be at the forefront of everything as an entire global ecosystem related to the world of economics, politics, foreign policy, and many others is dependent on it. So, unless the media dishes out accurate information seamlessly in double-quick time, the implications for the ecosystem could be immense.

Importantly, media companies are facing serious cost escalation in delivering services. This is due to the rising competition from Over-The-Top (OTT) players and other overhead costs. However, these challenges can be addressed by identifying and leveraging the value trapped across organizations and reinvesting them to fuel new growth avenues.

The media of today uses a plethora of technologies to collect, process, and transmit information in real-time. This leaves no scope for errors as the implications can be huge. Media too is grappling with challenges that others are facing. These include working with legacy systems, which do not lend themselves to quick real-time processing. Further, the digitally savvy consumers of today use a range of devices to access information. This means the news distributed over multiple channels should be accurate, secure, and responsive. So, how to overcome such challenges that a globalized world has brought about? The answer is digital transformation induced QA automation services that make the final product dynamic, richer, responsive, and secure.

The media industry encompasses a host of techno-driven scenarios, activities, products, and services. Some of them include OTT, IPTV, set-top boxes, video transcoding, buffering, streaming, closed captioning, and video editing. To ensure their quality, software QA automation should be made part of the workflow. However, care must be taken to ensure software test automation services include the below-mentioned conditions:

• Be technology and tool agnostic
• Capability to run tests across devices and platforms
• Provide an expansive test coverage area
• Ensure quality in the quickest possible time
• The automated QA testing tool should accommodate various file formats, payment processing methods, security protocols, or streaming scenarios.

How QA automation services can help the media industry?

The media industry is increasingly driven by changing customer behavior. It includes rising expectations among the younger generation demanding quick access to quality content in real-time, anytime and anywhere. Also, the media industry is facing various other types of challenges, which include:

• Consumers becoming savvy to identify marketing campaigns disguised as editorial content.
• Consumers becoming aware of the information about them being monetized by third parties. In fact, complicated privacy policies are turning consumers to media players who provide better data privacy and transparency.

The digital transformation initiatives comprising software QA automation can help media companies in addressing the above-mentioned challenges and deliver the following benefits:

• Simplifying Operations: There is a lot of trapped value in silo-driven departments and processes. These increase the Opex budget of media companies as they end up duplicating efforts across traditional and digital channels. Media companies can become efficient, focused, and better performing by centralizing their processes. This shall simplify operations and release value for the companies to drive growth. Developing an ERP solution customized to the specific needs of the media industry can achieve the above-mentioned outcomes. And by running automation testing services, each and every feature and functionality of the solution can be validated.
• Real-time Content Management using Data Analytics: Media companies are increasingly delivering services built around content. In doing so, they are expected to provide meaningful customer experiences. Data analytics can derive meaningful inferences about consumer preferences from a variety of channels and devices. And

automated QA testing can check the data for any hidden glitch or bug and turn it glitch-free. It is only when structured and glitch-free data is analyzed that proper business intelligence can be derived. This can help media organizations to plan suitable strategies and stay up the winning curve.

• Contextualization and Personalization: Content creators and marketers need to generate personalized content to garner consumer attention. This can be a challenge given the information overload consumers are subjected to. However, while doing this, issues of data privacy and security ought to be tackled in a transparent manner. A robust QA process can ensure if the sensitive consumer information is secure or the delivery process adheres to the existing security protocols or regulations.

Conclusion

The media industry is churning due to the advent of new technologies, growing competition, and changing customer preferences. Moreover, since disseminating content over multiple channels need to be assured of quality and security, media companies can engage in QA automation services.

Oliver has been associated with Cigniti Technologies Ltd as an Associate Manager - Content Marketing, with over 10 years of industry experience as a Content Writer in Software Testing & Quality Assurance industry.