Cost savings with Testing as a service model for international information technology firm
Client
A multinational information technology company that have been in partnership with BeyondSoft since 1998.
Background
The business division from the information technology firm was looking to engage a test service partner using Testing as a Service (TaaS) model to help their business:
Improve productivity and efficiency
Enhanced data collection
Resources management
Increased agility
Before Transformation
The Hardware Quality Engineering test (HWQE) was executed by multiple test vendors. The HWQE also engaged an onsite contractor at their office to manage the test execution & planning from different test partners. Besides that, the company owned all the test equirement, and conducted the test planning, logistics and defects management. This caused more cost to be incurred, and more effort needed to standardise the reporting for program team as different test partners have different tools and process.
After Transformation
Beyondsoft is the single Testing Service Provider for the HWQE where we owned all the necessary items for Test Planning & Execution (Test Resource Management, Logistics, Samples & Media, and Test Planning & Tactical) as well as Results Reporting (Data & Results, Dashboarding, Defect Tracking & Management).
BYS has invested close to USD 2 million to setup a reliability test lab within 6 months, which is fully operational.
Currently, 95% of the HWQE can be conducted in-house in BYS. Remaining 5% are certification related and to be assigned to BYS test partner.
Beyond that, the computer company has also streamlined their tools and processes for TaaS model. This in turn greatly optimizes their data collection for analysis by gathering the right data across various touchpoints.
Client’s Benefit
Through the TaaS model, the company gains an estimate cost savings of approximately USD 600K. Further, by adopting this model, it also greatly improves business agility as it brings more productivity and cost-efficiency without compromising on quality. In essence, the HWQE can now focus more on quality without spending efforts and resources in defining the test planning and reporting. By translating raw data into insights across various touchpoints, it helps to provide more relevant, personalized, and agile content for customers to drive data insights.
Integrated System Test Transition from Shanghai to Singapore and Malaysia within 6 months
Client
A multinational information technology company that have been in partnership with Beyondsoft since 1998.
Challenges
The company decided to shut down the test lab in China and shift their operations to Singapore and Malaysia. However, it is easier said than done as Covid-19 has posted one of the major impacts during this transition due to non-essential industries receiving stop work order from governments. Hence, Beyondsoft had to create an innovative way to perform the knowledge transition and complete the lab setup without jeopardizing the transition schedule.
In addition, the company also required that the test lab setup must be in accordance to the same standard in Shanghai; with strict security requirements (certified test lab, isolated network etc.) and lab facilities requirement (Test Chambers, 230V electricity output andetc.) Before the transition, the company’s DIST (Designed Integrated System Test) was conducted in-house at Shanghai using BeyondSoft resources. The Test lab and facilities are owned by the computer company’s Chinese offices, however BeyondSoft supplied the CW (expand) headcount to them.
Results
DIST was conducted in-house at the company’s Shanghai office using BYS resources and fully operational within 6 months of transition. This includes the following:
Setup functional and reliability test lab based on DIST requirement. For example, electricity upgrade to run both 110v and 230v in the test lab.
Coordinate with 3rd party supplier on setup of climatic walk-in chamber in the test lab.
Obtained canon (Canon?) certification based on the security requirement in the test lab.
Moreover, Beyondsoft had fulfilled all manpower resource requirements by filling all roles with existing talent pool plus new hires in Singapore. All training were conducted successfully via Remote Test Management initiative.
Client Benefit
The client enjoyed the benefit of consolidated and streamlined process and documentations, aside from increased efficiency by leveraging support from other Beyondsoft testing team.
2023 Year in Review: Beyondsoft Americas
In the world of technology, innovation and progress take center stage. Accordingly, as a tech-focused company, we want to take time to reflect on our most significant accomplishments of the past 12 months. Sharing these achievements is also consistent with Beyondsoft’s core values of accountability, collaboration, and transparency (ACT).
Our team members take the time to understand your business and IT pain points, then find ways to include emerging technologies to deliver solutions for your current known needs, while also working together to uncover any previously unknown needs. We take pride in personalizing interactions and delivering exceptional experiences, and we do so for two simple reasons – we value you, and our customers, and we truly believe we can innovate and excel together.
Below are some of the 2023 key highlights in Beyondsoft Americas.
Expanded footprint in Brazil and the UK
In March 2023, Beyondsoft expanded its footprint in Brazil by acquiring 4MSTECH, an IT consultancy that specializes in Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure and Solutions. In May 2023, Beyondsoft also expanded its presence to the United Kingdom.
Achieved specializations and certificates
Our team dedicated significant effort to mastering Microsoft Azure technologies and obtained three Azure specializations and four security specializations through rigorous audits. Furthermore, we successfully obtained five out of the six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, including (1) Azure Infrastructure, (2) Azure Digital & App Innovation, (3) Modern Work, (4) Data and AI, and (5) Security. We also received the Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP) badge, awarded only to the most high-fidelity cloud-managed services providers.
Another notable achievement is our designation as one of the few companies in the world with Microsoft Azure VMware Solution specialization. This milestone reflects our team’s dedication to continuous improvement and driving customer success. We also recently completed our annual ISO 27001 IT Security Management audit, reaching yet another landmark in our ongoing quest to meet all our customers’ security and governance needs.
“It is rewarding to be able to rely on a technical team like Beyondsoft, which offers the highest quality, knowledge, agility, and a focus on customer satisfaction.”
Eduardo Ângelo, WeVets, Director of IT and Customer Experience
Established Cloud Center of Excellence
We unveiled our Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to quickly address business problems with the adoption and maintenance of cloud technologies. CCoE is a viable alternative for those who need just-in-time expertise for a short or long-term cloud project. Our suite of Microsoft specializations serves as validation of our expertise in delivering scalable cloud projects with positive measurable outcomes.
Reshaping AI for your business
Our journey in AI (Artificial Intelligence) is guided by our promise to promote innovation and inclusivity. Building on our success with chatbots, we expanded our AI toolkit to a multifaceted AI platform. This new platform houses a suite of solutions tailored to various industry needs.
Within this expansive portfolio, the knowledge solution – rooted in generative AI – stands out. It’s designed to revolutionize how you manage both structured and unstructured knowledge. More than just storage and retrieval, this solution harnesses the power of generative AI to understand, manage, and even generate knowledge, ensuring customers consistently receive accurate and contextually relevant information.
We also integrated BIOPs™, an AI foundational engine familiar to many of our customers. BIOPs™ houses the auto ML (machine learning) framework and facilitates the creation of a diverse range of AI services on the AI platform.
Paying it forward
With the rising attention on sustainability, our DEI team partnered with Packed with Purpose, a B Corp Certified company, to craft an eco-friendly gift strategy that champions women-owned and diverse-owned companies. We turned our annual picnic event into a sustainable and purposeful summer gift basket opportunity. Every employee at our office in Bellevue, Washington received a heartfelt gift basket featuring wholesome snacks from businesses dedicated to sustainable practices.
During our recent holiday event, we teamed up with the United States Marine Corps Toys for Tots program, inviting our employees to donate toys supporting children and families in need. Over the years, the Marine Corps has established close working relationships with social welfare agencies, churches, and other local community agencies to distribute toys to children from economically challenged backgrounds. This marks our second year participating in this program, and our employees embraced the spirit of giving and donated wholeheartedly.
Our Costa Rica team members gave a presentation to young females at Colegio Suri, a private educational institution, about opportunities for Women in STEM Careers. Colegio Suri extends scholarships to 100% of its students. Key takeaways from the presentation included:
Take charge of your career in tech or any field.
Your tech skills will unlock many career opportunities.
Explore certifications offered in established companies to broaden your knowledge and boost your employability.
Fostering a strong team culture
We are thrilled that our Brazil office team members have been honored with the 2023 Great Place to Work award. Additionally, our office in Rio de Janeiro won the 6th position in the Great Place to Work technology category. Both awards highlight our team’s dedication to fostering a positive and inclusive workplace culture where our employees bring their best selves to work.
Thought leadership media coverage
GCR Viewpoint invited our team to share our knowledge on threat management. In this LinkedIn post published in October 2023, we provided actionable guidance to help customers fortify their security posture.
Also this year, we were approached by CIO Review – which named us as one 20 most promising IT Managed Services in the U.S. and LATAM regions – to provide insights on how to build a managed services model for our customers. You can read the details in this LinkedIn post.
What’s next in 2024?
“As we look into the future, we remain confident in supporting our customers to propel their digital optimization and fostering sustainable growth. We will embrace challenges and seize the opportunities within the ever-evolving digital landscape.”
Jasmine Jin, AVP, Operations at Beyondsoft Americas
If you are looking for an ally in cloud adoption and transformation, data and AI modernization, agile operations and security, and business process management, then tap into our expertise to shape your business outcomes. We’ll help you translate concepts into tangible frameworks and develop a strategy to secure leadership support. Reach out to us today.
Four benefits to hiring a Managed Services Provider. One of them is cost optimization
This whitepaper is co-authored by Alex Perazza, Chris Knott, Eduardo Mecking, Larissa Ferreira, Sharon Loh and many team members across Beyondsoft.
A reliable MSP is an investment in your success. The evolving business climate we face and the new technologies we’re using have disrupted how we do business. The status quo no longer works. There is a generational shift happening in the workplace with people and with digital transformation. This disruption is forcing many companies to redefine their model for success
This whitepaper walks you through in detail how we apply our years of experience enabling our customers achieve cost optimization, operations excellence, security and governance, and leverage AI-powered capabilities to unlock new levels of productivity.
Fortify against Cybersecurity Threats using Beyondsoft’s framework on Security Operations Center
Companies around the world are always looking for new ways to make their security stronger because cyber threats are getting more common and tricky. Using better security tools is important, but companies should also think about creating a Security Operations Center (SOC) to handle these complex threats.
This whitepaper explains how Beyondsoft can help your company set up a Security Operations Center using a mix of people, processes, and advanced technologies. This will help monitor security issues in real-time and investigate them to stop, find, and respond to cyber threats.
Four advantages of IT managed services you might not know about
Keeping pace with the fast-evolving technology landscape while maintaining your applications and ensuring your systems are secure, scalable, and efficient can be daunting, particularly for organizations with limited resources. And few businesses have the budget to hire experts with every emerging skill set they require. That’s where an IT managed services provider can help.
As a strategic partner, an IT managed services provider supplies a dedicated team of professionals with specialized skills and knowledge to oversee one or more day-to-day parts of your business, such as IT operations support, application management, or a global contact center. As a result, you gain access to a pool of experts, the latest technologies, and industry-leading processes and best practices without breaking the budget. You also free up your in-house experts to focus on accelerating your business.
But did you know that there are lots of other benefits of an IT managed services provider? Below, I’ve shared some of the lesser-known advantages.
1. Work smarter with generative AI
Managed services providers that integrate generative AI into their service models can help you unlock new levels of efficiency and productivity. Generative AI can help optimize resource allocation, automate routine tasks, and improve decision-making processes. In addition, it can analyze data to identify patterns, trends, and security threats and predict potential issues and anomalies. Such insights can inform preventative measures, ultimately reducing disruptions and improving system reliability.
Furthermore, generative AI such as ChatGPT can power chatbots, using natural language processing capabilities to respond to user queries, saving time and improving customer satisfaction.
2. Improve financial predictability and accountability
With managed services, you get a clear and predictable cost structure, allowing you to budget and plan more effectively. This can be particularly valuable if your business has variable workloads or seasonal demand. Managed services providers can help your organization identify areas for cost optimization and greater efficiency to maximize your IT investment and increase ROI. Furthermore, engaging with an IT managed services provider enables you to allocate internal resources more effectively and make more targeted investments in staffing and training.
3. Strengthen security and compliance
Partnering with a reliable IT managed services provider can enhance your organization’s security measures. You gain access to a team of professionals with expertise in the latest security threats, industry standards, and best practices, which may not be available in-house. They can recommend strong security measures by deploying advanced firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and automated updates and patches. Moreover, they can use advanced monitoring tools and technologies to respond to security threats immediately and take swift action to minimize the impact and address vulnerabilities.
Additionally, a managed service provider can help you meet industry-specific compliance and regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, SOX, and HIPAA. They can help you identify gaps and areas of non-compliance and recommend and implement the necessary controls and measures your business needs to ensure compliance.
4. Enhance business availability
Increased business availability is another advantage of partnering with a great IT managed service provider, ensuring your applications and data are available when needed. Proactive monitoring helps prevent system downtime, performance bottlenecks, and other potential issues. When issues do occur, your managed services provider can quickly diagnose and resolve issues to minimize the impact on operations. They can also perform regular maintenance and backups to enhance system availability and reliability.
Furthermore, your managed services provider can help you develop robust disaster recovery and business continuity plans and processes. They can identify gaps and issues and create backup and recovery strategies, incident response procedures, and system redundances to ensure maximum system uptime.
Trust Beyondsoft IT managed services for your business
WeVets cuts tech costs by nearly 40% with managed services from Beyondsoft
THE CHALLENGE
WeVets prioritizes excellence, tradition, and innovation and expects to expand to 15 locations in the coming year. To achieve this growth, they wanted to modernize their IT environment, leveraging Microsoft solutions such as Azure and Microsoft 365.
As part of the effort, WeVets was also looking to increase management quality, optimize its infrastructure from a performance and cost perspective, improve governance and risk mitigation, and ultimately, better serve its growing customer base.
THE SOLUTION
After identifying multiple opportunities, such as increased visibility and cost predictability, Beyondsoft applied a comprehensive, three-phase approach to the project:
Strategic planning: Beyondsoft experts conducted a deep assessment of the business to analyze areas such as reliability, security, operations, performance, and costs to develop an end-to-end modernization roadmap.
Innovation and adoption: Beyondsoft accelerated innovation and adoption through digital and consulting services, architecture reviews, and conceptualizing new environments to address WeVets’ needs. In this phase, Beyondsoft improved governance with continuous management and optimization, with the assurance of high standards and industry-leading security and risk mitigation practices.
Continuous operation and governance: In phase, the Beyondsoft Managed Services team continues to maintain the baseline established in previous phases, ensuring a high standard of governance, cost optimization, technology adoption, and security and risk mitigation. This managed services model ensures excellence while liberating WeVets to focus on delivering exemplary veterinary care to its clients and growing its business.
“With the optimization and greater efficiency in management, we can see new opportunities for investment and expansion.”
— Eduardo Ângelo, WeVets Director
THE RESULTS
Although the modernization effort is still underway, WeVets has already reaped benefits. “One of our pillars is innovation, so we constantly invest in technology,” says Eduardo Ângelo, WeVets Director. “With support from Beyondsoft, we were able to identify improvements and upgrade to a better architecture and other services that ensure new opportunities.”
Additional benefits include:
30-40% reduction in technology costs
Adoption of financial control and governance practices
Increased security and risk mitigation across their systems and applications
To learn more about how Beyondsoft can help your business, contact us today. To learn more about how Beyondsoft is empowering modernization and growth for WeVets, watch this short video.
Reusable CDN testing and migration solution cuts workload in half while saving $70K
THE CHALLENGE
Our customer needed to test and validate a massive migration of more than 50,000 web pages across 250 domains from their content delivery network (CDN) to another platform. The CDN testing and migration solution had to be thorough and precise due to the sensitive nature of the content and the massive scope of the effort. Furthermore, the solution needed robust, automated reporting capabilities and be reusable for future projects.
THE SOLUTION
To meet the customer’s requirements, Beyondsoft developed an automated tool to perform comparisons of link redirects, static content, HAR files, MD5, and pre- and post-migration content screenshots. The tool generates HTML reports with scores for each web page comparison. For mobile application pages, the tool uses API calls that are triggered for comparing pre-login calls. Due to the sheer volume of test candidates, the tool leverages separate docker containers for testing each pair of new and existing domains.
Additionally, to comply with the customer’s acceptance criteria, Beyondsoft delivered test strategy documentation, insights around the reusability level of the automated tool, crawler scripts and documentation around their accuracy, and proof of the tool’s ability to test multiple languages.
Implementing the CDN testing and migration solution
To ensure future reusability, Beyondsoft built a simple, straightforward, and modular process. The automated tool takes inputs in the form of new domains. It then checks for existing screenshots and HAR files. If the files don’t exist, it runs a crawler to get the files. If the files do exist, the automated tool starts the comparison process. To ensure the accuracy and quality of the results, the automated testing tool is designed to perform multiple passes. Upon completion, it generates a report with scores for each test type.
The biggest implementation challenge was ensuring the tool could handle multiple aspects of testing without failure. Today this tool can be used for any future CDN migrations. The tool is extremely versatile and can be adjusted to the specific needs of any client.
How the testing solution works
THE RESULTS
Thanks to the reusable testing and migration solution developed by Beyondsoft, our customer realized the following benefits:
Decreased manual workload by 50%.
Improved process efficiency by 75%.
Reduced the time required for testing from two months to just five weeks.
Lowered the cost from $250K to $180K.
TECHNOLOGIES USED
Java, Python 3.8, Firefox 81.X, and Geckodriver v0.28.0
Considerations for designing a test automation strategy
The importance of test automation is evident. As more and more organizations move towards continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), the elimination of manual processes in the testing pipeline is critical to ensuring a quality product is delivered rapidly and reliably.
But automation in and of itself doesn’t create value for your organization. Automating flawed processes doesn’t help, nor does simply throwing tools at the problem. In this article, we’ll explore a few things to consider when designing a test automation strategy that will yield the rewards you and your team are looking for.
Focus on automating the right tests
Test automation has the potential to improve your existing testing pipeline significantly, but it also requires a rethinking of the testing process as a whole to create actual value. Simply taking each manual process and automating it can lead to wasted time–or worse, it can complicate certain feedback loops that cause more manual work elsewhere in the development pipeline.
The key is to identify which parts of your testing process create bottlenecks and focus on automating those. Automating testing processes outside the bottleneck creates the illusion of speed but doesn’t make things run more quickly. For example, automating a test that runs annually takes more time than it saves. On the other hand, automating repetitive, frequent tests provides immediate value. It’s also important to think about automating high-risk test processes or those with a high degree of failure. Putting solid thought into what you’re automating and why delivers far better results.
Tools are just that: tools
With the rapid proliferation of test automation tools, it can seem as though procuring new tools will automatically bring gains to your testing process. However, tools are only as good as the people that use them and the strategy behind their use. Building the right team with the proper skillsets and focusing on using the right tool for the right job is critical to success.
Make sure that you fully understand your needs, limitations, and requirements and establish your criteria before selecting a tool. In addition to budget and licensing costs, your criteria might include:
Ease of use
Scripting capabilities
Reporting capabilities
Programming language support
Technical support
Integration requirements
Build for the future
Successful test automation is not a “set it and forget it” solution. Constant changes in infrastructure, software libraries, user interfaces, and third-party dependencies must be considered when building a test automation framework.
Like software development itself, effective automation is an ongoing process, and it’s vital to have the right resources in place to keep up with that process. Whether in-house or outsourced, ensure you’ve built a team that can keep your significant investment in test automation running smoothly well into the future.
Test automation is a powerful tool, but it is not a quick fix. It is crucial to build your test automation framework on a solid foundation, which means putting serious thought into your roadmap. Cobbling together tools and throwing bodies at the process may provide the illusion of improvement but is not a sustainable approach. Having the right people, partners, and processes in place will ensure you get the most out of your investment from day one and well into the future.
Tap industry experts
We can help you get your test automation strategy off the ground. Over the past ten years Beyondsoft has helped countless companies accelerate release cycles, reduce risk, and streamline processes. Our customers benefit from our extensive DevOps expertise across platforms such as AWS and Azure.
Our team combined agile AWS tools, best practices, and methodologies along with our DevOps enablement framework to establish an enterprise-scalable CI/CD platform with automated testing practices to expedite innovation and meet your business objectives. To learn more, contact us today.
Software giant elevates quality and capacity with Beyondsoft QA and testing services
THE CHALLENGE
Our client’s Digital Video & Audio, Digital Imaging, and Pro Digital Imaging product teams are responsible for the most popular Adobe software on the market, including the Premiere Pro, After Effect, Rush, Aero, Photoshop, and Lightroom, among others. Serving millions of users worldwide, the ability to reliably scale the testing of new features to guarantee stability is a top priority. Their testing and quality assurance (QA) efforts were complicated by the new release cycle changing from semiannually to monthly. New products like the Premiere Rush Mobile even began to release weekly. In addition, the Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines demanded nightly verifications.
Better and faster testing was needed to ensure quality and performance without regression issues. The client’s team of quality engineers needed help covering the staggering amount of QA and testing work efficiently and cost-effectively.
THE SOLUTION
Beyondsoft was the first-ever vendor brought in by the client to support its software development. As a leading vendor of QA and testing services with delivery centers around the world, Beyondsoft quickly assembled a mixed-shore team to help our client manage its software testing and delivery processes. The QA team reported and tracked issues and maintained test cases and test plans to make sure all basic functions in the new builds were good and free of any blocking/regression issues and other critical bugs. It also provided timely responses and proactive feedback to the client to improve the products.
Because of the time difference, the offshore team integrated perfectly with the San Jose-based development team to conduct test pass against all products on a nightly basis. The Beyondsoft team played a critical role in the monthly release cycle. Since our team started supporting the client, the application crash rate has dropped significantly to an unprecedented 2%.
The client’s newly acquired QA expertise and capacity allowed it to optimize the development of its products and processes and mitigate risks, where tests and verifications are implemented more frequently and earlier in the software development life cycle. Beyondsoft also brought cross-platform device testing capability for all hardware devices including PC, laptop, tablets, and mobile phones running all varieties of operating systems.
The significant improvements in the quality and reliability of the software were evident to the users. As the result, user satisfaction saw a steady rise. One long-time Adobe user wrote, “This version of the Premiere Pro is the most stable one I’ve ever used.” Today, Beyondsoft is the client’s integral partner in enabling the fast release engineering capability through manual and automated API and component and functional testing of high priority and high visibility products.
