The inevitability of Digital Transformation and the need for Digital Assurance

Digital transformation has become inevitable for enterprises to stay agile and competitive. The omnichannel interfaces of software forming the core of digital transformation can be made secure by following digital assurance.   

According to Nigel Fenwick, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester, “Business leaders now consider accelerating the shift to digital business as the most critical priority in 2021. It should come as no surprise that COVID-19 has widened the digital business gap between digitally advanced firms and firms that were caught off guard by the pandemic. Less obvious are differences between how advanced firms operate compared with their less advanced counterparts. It’s clear that advanced firms are more future fit. They use their digital capabilities to help their businesses be adaptable, creative, and resilient.” 

Successful organizations run with clear business objectives and have the right vision and roadmap to achieve them. They follow proven strategies to create value for their clients and stakeholders. However, with rapid advancements in digital technologies comprising AI and ML, the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, Big Data, and Cloud Computing, among others, organizations need to have the right IT architecture to add value and stay competitive.   

Today, businesses deal with copious amount of information emanating from omnichannel interfaces such as Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC). To process the same, they need a robust IT infrastructure and derive quick decision making, better customer experience, increased operational efficiency, and enhanced business capabilities. Digital transformation helps organizations to meet the above-mentioned objectives and address the ever-changing dynamics of market and customer preferences. Also, since customers expect their engagement with an organization to be consistent across channels, the organization needs to enable an omnichannel approach.   

Digital transformation helps organizations to:  

• Automate and standardize workflows  
• Turn agile and responsive to changes  
• Build and deliver better quality products or services  
• Deliver improved customer experience  
• Increase and sustain profitability   

As digital transformation gains pace with companies embracing it in droves, the level of competition has seen a commensurate increase. This has brought ‘quality’ and ‘customer experience’ to the center stage. Companies, to stay competitive, need to deliver products of high quality. Also, they need to adopt the latest trends and add new features and functionalities to the existing products. This would mean upgrading their workflows and making them quality compliant through digital assurance.  

According to Tim Sheedy, Principal Analyst, at Forrester, “Your Quality Assurance and Testing practices must adapt to digital business too – testing needs to be able to accelerate development – not slow it down. QA needs to focus on customer needs. The QA team needs to speak the language of the customer, get involved with new technology projects at the ideation stage, line up and manage test data before it is required, and empower developers to do much of the testing themselves.”  

However, new technologies implemented as part of digital transformation are creating specific challenges for digital assurance and testing.    

• Testing the integration of systems and services across private and public clouds and local platforms  
• Testing end-to-end workflows and efficacy of the delivery modules  
• Validating the consistency of outcome across omnichannel interfaces (traditional systems, mobile, and social)  
• Ensuring omnichannel assurance across channels, systems, devices, and platforms for superior customer experience  
• Assuring data analytics to drive customer engagement by leveraging big data   
• Validating mobile testing strategy, test automation, network and service virtualization, and functional testing comprising security, performance, accessibility, and compatibility  
• Testing big data on Hadoop  
• Validating AI-based analytics solution  
• Testing IoT systems  

Digital transformation is driving enterprises to redefine business models, processes, workplaces, customer segments, and products & services. However, changing customer preferences and market dynamics are calling for a fundamental shift in traditional quality assurance. The shift aims at harnessing the full power of digital technologies to achieve business objectives and ensure customer loyalty.   

The above-mentioned challenges exemplify the difficulties testers face in comparing the consistency of features and functionalities across channels. This has become even more complex given the rapidly changing system configurations and browser/OS variants. In other words, the main challenge in testing the success of digital transformation initiative is related to the quality of customer experience.   

Today’s digital assurance solutions need to be focused on the outcome rather than be driven by inputs alone. They go beyond the usual fare of enabling digital transformation to enhance its impact on a business. Digital QA testing helps organizations – whether transforming from legacy systems or born digital, to drive value and enhance the customer experience. Thus, transformational digital assurance testing ultimately ensures that a business maintains its competitive edge.   

How can digital assurance help in digital transformation?  

Digital transformation allows enterprises to streamline workflows, augment capacities, accelerate the delivery of products, and deliver superior customer experiences. However, the success of this is underpinned on carrying out digital quality assurance. Further, with Agile and DevOps methodologies of software development-testing-delivery coming as a game-changer, the salience of digital assurance solutions has become stark. Let us discuss the ways such solutions can help in the success of digital transformation.   

Creating Value: When a business expands its operations leveraging digital transformation, digital testing becomes critical. In fact, QA should be considered at the beginning of any business project to deliver consistent customer experience across digital channels. The end-to-end digital assurance and testing help businesses to unlock the value of the digital economy. In achieving the same, it should span operations, experience, security, convergence, and performance.   

Preempts business emergencies: With cybercriminals on the prowl using ransomware, trojans, and viruses, among others, software systems can get compromised. This can lead to situations like missing data, blackouts, system failures, or communication breakdowns. This is where digital QA can identify the vulnerabilities or glitches present in the system and mitigate them. It can ensure the software or system has no margin for error.   

Cost savings: Arguably one of the reasons for implementing digital transformation. However, faulty software that forms the core of digital transformation can cost the project heavy. Moreover, it is common knowledge that longer a glitch remains undetected in software, the longer and costly it becomes to be fixed. So, by employing a robust digital QA and testing procedure, an enterprise can save time and money.  

Great customer experience: Customer experience has become the sole determinant in making or breaking the fortune of a product or service. However, this can be impeded if the software runs slow or offers non-functioning features. Remember, poor customer experience can cause dissatisfaction leading to the abandonment of the product. Good customer experience, on the other hand, can result in a satisfied customer who can recommend the product or brand to others.   

Conclusion   

Digital transformation is helping enterprises to achieve a host of objectives including driving ROI. However, the glitches emanating from omnichannel sources can render it infructuous. It is only through a rigorous digital assurance exercise enterprise can detect glitches early, remedy them, and make the software or system worthy of use.   

The shift to digital-first has resulted in organizations reimagining their business models and customer strategies. A robust digital transformation strategy requires a complete makeover of the traditional QA processes and infrastructure. 

Cigniti’s Digital assurance & testing solutions address the multi-faceted needs of digital transformation testing. We assure digital transformations by conducting comprehensive testing across your digital value chain encompassing digital marketing, web portals, web content, digital assets, web analytics, and the entire digital ecosystem – which includes cloud, mobility, big data, and connected devices.  

Cigniti is a thought leader in the field of digital testing and our teams have successfully implemented digital assurance and testing strategies for many organizations, helping them give their consumers the best user experience. 

Need help? Connect with us to learn more about accelerating your digital transformation journey with digital assurance testing.