How businesses can gain from Digital Test Assurance in seven ways

Digital technology has made a paradigm shift in the lives of people. The advent of electronic devices and various security paraphernalia, not to mention cars and other transportation systems, has brought about higher levels of comfort and convenience. The sweep of digital technology has largely been felt in the domains of computers and Internet where branches like big data analytics, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence have ushered in a revolution of sorts. However, notwithstanding the humongous benefits accrued from embracing digital technology, the concurrent threat of security has added an added dimension to everything. 

As people’s lives (including businesses) have become increasingly intertwined with digital technology, there exist people with ulterior motives or systems impregnated with glitches that can cause immense disruptions. The only way to safeguard oneself from such an eventuality is by carrying out digital assurance, which can hasten better delivery of quality products and services, ensure greater customer experience, and thereby better ROI for the company. Digital assurance and testing entails utilizing methodologies such as Agile, Lean, DevOps, and cloud computing to bring about greater automation of digital application testing services. 

Top seven ways in which digital testing can enable businesses are as follows:

1. To remain competitive: By embracing digital testing enterprises can achieve strategic goals of remaining competitive and deliver better customer experience. Digital application testing helps in bringing about synergy among various functions that hitherto used to work in silos. Moreover, by delivering quality products or services quickly to the market and ensuring better customer experience through continuous improvement a la Agile, businesses can achieve better ROI.

2. Use of latest digital testing tools like automation: Contemporary digital application testing methods can be time consuming and leave a lot to be desired as far as removing glitches is concerned. Here, the salient role of automation through tools like Selenium in doing away with such challenges is well established. 

3. Improve productivity and efficiency: The process of digital assurance enables inter functional efficiency thanks to better communication and unity of purpose. Digital application testing leads to quick identification of glitches and their correction, faster application development and delivery, and better customer experience. 

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.

Top 10 reasons why choosing the right software testing can empower you

To stay put in competition of being lapped up by customers is no mean task, for everything at the end boils down to mostly one aspect – quality. And ensuring quality at every stage of the application development process requires engaging software testing solutions that lay greater emphasis on software QA testing processes such as unit testing, functional testing, performance testing, security testing, and user acceptance testing, among many others. Moreover, given the deluge of applications covering every possible domain present on the internet, there exists many software testing companies dishing out software testing solutions as well, many of which do not necessarily conform to the highest benchmarks of software QA testing protocols. 

Hence, it becomes imperative for companies to engage software testing companies with the required skill sets – of developing bespoke software testing solutions. Implementing effective software QA testing is helpful in assessing the features, functionality, navigability, security and usability of an application, which in turn, ensures that the application remains robust and free of bugs. Such an application will always find a market for customers, as enterprises are always on the lookout for applications that meet their expectations – qualitatively.

Ten reasons why choosing the right software testing solutions is important:

1) Software specific: Every application aims at a particular goal, and requires customised software QA testing suite to achieve the same. For example: A health related software can’t be tested by using a general testing software.  

2) Meeting regulatory benchmarks: Applications to be used in particular segments such as healthcare, requires abiding regulatory IEC or ISO specifications. In such cases if effective software QA testing is not used, the application may fall foul of such standards thereby inviting stiff penalties.

3) Meeting customers’ expectations: Customers have different expectations from an application – some might be satisfied with cool looking interfaces while others might want faster downloads and results.

4) Risk level: The type, scope and quality of risk may vary across applications. The risks associated with a health related application may be different from say, a financial application. Thus, choosing right software testing companies is critical.

5) Testers’ expertise: The skills of software testers play an important role in choosing a testing software. For example: if the testing software is complex to grasp and execute, the company might need to reskill the in-house testers or hire new ones, which is a costly proposition.

6) Time constraints: A complex testing suite might take time for testers to understand and execute its sequences, which might lead to a delay in releasing the software in the market.

7) Losing the competitive edge: The use of any run of the mill testing software might not test the application in its entirety, thus leaving scope for the presence of bugs. This might lead to deterioration in quality and a bad user experience.

8) Budget constraints: Many testing suites by software testing companies are available at a premium, which strains the budget. Hence, choosing the right testing software – preferably from the cloud, may tick all the right boxes including budget.

9) Checking all stages and scenarios: The right testing software should be able to check all stages of the application development process including all input scenarios.

10) Impact on ROI: A better tested application has a greater chance of being accepted by customers leading to better conversion and ROI for the company. 

In Conclusion

Choosing the right kind of testing software will ensure quality, stability and marketability of the application.  

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.

Can Test Automation for Salesforce lead to better implementation?

Salesforce has emerged as one of the favourite cloud based CRM software suites that companies have adopted to bring in efficiency, better cross functional synergy, gauging productivity, better management of sales, marketing and vendors, help in data migration, and to address the most important component of all – the end customers, among other diverse objectives. Cloud based Salesforce implementation prevents businesses from buying costly CRM softwares and related infrastructure thus leading to savings. Under the overarching umbrella of Salesforce, businesses can develop customised applications (four million by the latest count) to better manage their resources, functions, vendors, and customers. It goes without saying that the successful run of such applications can lead to a company being competitive in the market driven economics of today. This calls for Salesforce testing, not by a typical QA tester or his team but by a certified Salesforce tester and his team only. 

Most companies operating on Salesforce platform leverage continuous integration / development / deployment of applications and Agile or DevOps methodology. In such operational ecosystem undertaking, manual testing by a Salesforce tester can be self defeating for the following reasons:

·         Slow in developing, testing and implementing an application

·         Not able to test the entire gamut of input scenarios

·         Difficult to synchronise testing where data is distributed across geographies

·         Delay in identifying errors

·         Missing out on identifying errors due to human limitations in conducting repetitive checks

·         Missed out errors leading to botched outcomes and bad user experience

·         Human resources are tied with the tedium of testing, who otherwise could be deployed elsewhere for optimal use

Thus, implementing Salesforce test automation can eliminate the above mentioned shortcomings, besides realizing better ROI for companies. However, companies are still wary of applying Salesforce test automation owing to the following reasons:

·         Requirement of specialised Salesforce tester and his team to write automated scripts for carrying out Salesforce testing iterations

·         The automated test scripts are needed to be updated for every version of application a la regression Salesforce testing

·         Dependence on Salesforce tester and his team grows as the scripts get complex with time

Notwithstanding the above mentioned challenges to implement Salesforce test automation by companies, the advent of open source tools such as Selenium has brought about a sea change. As platforms such as Selenium, Provar, etc., are browser and language independent, writing automated codes by Salesforce tester and his team gets greatly facilitated. In fact, Salesforce testing processes such as unit testing, system testing, functional testing, and production, regression & user acceptance testing can achieve greater effectiveness should automation of Salesforce testing is carried out. 

Criteria to choose automation tools for Salesforce testing:

Flexibility: The tool should not require unnecessary codes to be written by a Salesforce tester, but possess pick and click interfaces, besides able to operate across platforms, architectures, browsers, and languages.

Integration: The tool should be able to leverage resources such as databases and emails to ensure better end to end integration.

Generation of reports: The tool should conduct automated tests at pre specified times as designated by a Salesforce tester before generating reports and sending them by emails.

Lightning compliant: The Lightning design system within the Salesforce ecosystem offers a user friendly interface, wherein one can easily develop applications. Hence, any tool to implement Salesforce test automation should be able to work with it. 

In Conclusion

By using tools to write automation scripts for Salesforce testing, companies can quickly develop better quality applications with Salesforce thereby ensuring increased ROI. 

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.