“Business is exposed to exponentially increasing global market”
“New businesses and Entrepreneurship culture fuelling digital growth”
Thomas Friedman in his ground breaking book ‘The World is Flat’ has well explained why developing countries has an edge over developed countries in embracing technology. Put it simply, a developed country has to follow upgrades to their technology which is complex and thus costlier than a developing country directly picking a technology. For instance, it was easy for India population to go for mobile phones as most of them were first time users while developed world has to convert their telephone lines to mobile users. A need for unlearning arise. This applies to companies those run on legacy and complex software systems as supposed to the new generation companies getting into the digital world. With less and less of capital cost through Social media and Virtualization, starting a digitally aligned business is possible in couple of hours where as it takes a transformation journey for a brick and mortar company to thrive.
“Digital is in every department, gone are the EDP days”
In 1980’s computer was in clean room and constrained to specialist EDP departments. Gone are those days and industry recognizes the shift where every department in a company is thinking of a digital strategy. Travel companies spend millions for paid search, Celebrities rely more on twitter handles than personal PROs, Marketing departments hire email marketers, Sales teams buy enterprise products, Warehouse linking to a logistics aggregator, Universities distribute laptops, e-Books outsells hand cover books. We have seen how digital strategy in political campaigns played its pivotal role. Digital value chain is unlimited and going strong.
“Keeping pace with digital speed and agility”
Though more businesses are exposed to global users and easy to go digital, it is abundantly clear that the expectation of the digital customer too is increasing. Business demands agility in keeping the products, service and customer satisfaction to world class. Retaining a digital customer and building a brand image across multiple channels yet stay ahead of global competition is the top corporate challenge and requires frequent changes to the way companies run the business. Robust software processes, suitable technologies and round the clock operating model is required. Decisions have to be quick, IT change has to be agile and studying consumer behaviour has to be real time and what not.
“Test the software for Anything - Anytime - Anywhere IT solutions”
While software testing by itself is an assurance function, unless a robust digital vision and strategy exists for an organization, a digital QA strategy is a vehicle without a driver. However, reducing time to market and bringing agility in software testing should be cared. Breaking conventional thinking of testing against the requirements and adapting to the software release process that is of desired agility is essential. Testers with technical skills around Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and the Internet of Things will makes him relevant in the digital world. Tester’s understanding of the product from consumer and business point of view is required. Analytics on user behaviour and user experience, studying his pain points would help assure the quality by keeping user at the centre of test strategy.
Ever growing user channels built to consume a product or service and the ability for the company to stay robust in placing the product or service without confusing the customer and slicing the brand equity will keep a company live in the digital age. We will no longer search for products or services, they will find us in this digital world. Companies failing to leverage the digital graph will only be squashed by it, so is the Tester.
Good one Sakthi, Keep posting!!
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