Innovo

Open banking is about to reach Australia. With delays to the roll-outs and major global disruptions such as COVID-19, the kick-off pilot program is set for July 1. Without any further disruptions this means major Australian banks will be required to make customer data more readily available and easier to consume for trusted third party providers (TPPs).

Given the current market disruptions around COVID-19 and the Australian bushfires, there seems to be major barriers in the way to adoption. Amongst the chaos large banks must modernize their core legacy systems and enable a digital ecosystem around their core data to comply.

However, without compliance or modernisation, a series of trends pose serious challenges to established bank and nonbank payments organizations. Some of these include:

• Technology innovations such as digital and mobile payment systems that lift customer expectations;
• Upgrades in cloud infrastructures are making payments faster while converging wallets, cards and mobile payments.
• The rise of fintechs and neo-banks are exerting competition and pressure on pricing including interest rates.

So how does a bank create competitive advantage in the age of major banking disruption?

Banks will require greater flexibility and agility. Not renowned for their speed-to-market, banks will need to unlock their core legacy systems and data to open up their service offering and create extra revenue streams from their customer data. Unlocking core legacy systems with a strong API layer will allow development and fintech teams to harness that data and build new service offerings quicker than any internal banking team could.

Amongst sharp business change, banks can create competitive advantage by leading with APIs and powerful integration layers that allow monolithic systems, applications and data to share information more easily. By consolidating their API strategy to maturity, banks will be able to create an open ecosystem around their products and allow fintechs to drive value from their data while clipping the ticket along the way, and offering improved customer experiences.

In this blog series we will be deep-diving into competitive advantages for banks adopting Open Banking standards. Over the next few weeks, we will be covering:

1. How to Enhance Service Offerings with Open Banking
2. How to Improve Overall Customer Engagement with Open Banking APIs
3. How to Increase Digital Revenue with Open Banking APIs
4. How to Deliver Banking-as-a-service: Open Banking Strategies with API-led Connectivity

Join us at our upcoming webinar on Open Banking & CDR in Australia: How to Capitalise on Your Technology Investments and Benefit from Compliance.

Banks and financial institutions in Australia face a looming July 1 deadline to meet Open Banking and CDR compliance legislation this year. But, when it means making a significant change to your business strategy, internal systems and technology infrastructure, Australian organisations can fall behind. In this webinar, we’ll be discussing covering:

The Reality: Where Australian financial institutions stand in their open banking journeys
The Problems: What challenges they are facing
An Ideal Scenario: Critical success factors for a winning open banking strategy and implementation
The Requirements: Capabilities internal and external required to excel in open banking

Tuesday, 26th May at 1.00pm AEST

REGISTER HERE

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About Innovo Technology & MuleSoft Open Banking Solution:

At Innovo, we’re a development and software testing organisation with experience working with external standards and payments processing systems. We’ve recently partnered with MuleSoft to help Australian finance, insurance and superannuation organisations overcome the CDR and Open Banking challenges.

Our solution involves the application of experienced Open Banking architects and developers who work on a pre-built Innovo & MuleSoft solution that is more than just an API. With an integrated layer of people and technology, our solution is taking pre-configured and customised, and quickly deployed – allowing your business to hit regulatory deadlines and in delivering a solution which is fit-for-purpose now and scales for the future.

The platform provides API hosting, Developer self-service portal, Identity Management (including strong authentication), a testing environment that mimics production behaviour, and the ability to integrate to an internal integration bus in either on-premise or cloud environments.

The Innovo solution is built on proven market leading MuleSoft technology, with all the integration and customisation required to deliver an Open Banking solution already done for you and available OTS.

Australia has a great opportunity to lead the way in consumer experience when it comes to the emergence of open banking and consumer data legislation in this country, which is currently (at the time of writing) due to be enforced by July 1 2020 (For the first wave of participants and reduced API & product scope, limiting the open banking use cases and potential benefits to the consumer)

The UK and the EU were amongst the global first to introduce open banking with many organisations suggesting it was a somewhat underwhelming start. Due to the pressure to meet deadlines and regulatory conditions, the UK missed the boat on educating its consumers about the real benefits of comprehensive data access, and how it can increase the potential for significantly improved consumer outcomes and personalised experience.

Research from Experian indicated that more than 50% of those surveyed didn’t associate any real benefit in sharing their account information, and this is reflected in the adoption rates. Innovo believes that this is down to a lack of education and enablement for the consumers and not because there isn’t a benefit. Also from an AU perspective we seem to be obsessed with mortgages, so generating interest in any other open banking use cases other than mortgages is difficult. Given the all time record low interest rates that all banks seem to be offering, the distinguishing factor going forward could be the Customer Experience provided by the fintechs / neobanks.

It’s crucial when implementing any new initiative, like with machine learning or AI for example, that consumers have all of the information they need to build trust with the new model. Providing consumers with an in-depth understanding around how and where -their data will be used is critical in building this trust with the Australian community. The CDR eco-system needs to be 100% secured to protect consumers ‘data in transit’ and ‘data at rest’. Unless consumer data is 100% protected, gaining trust from the consumers is going to be hard work. Another question that remains unanswered is that how can the regulator assure the consumer that their data does not leave the Australian shores.

It’s understandable that consumers would be cautious to share their data given the myriad of ways data can be misused, which makes it even more crucial that the Australian government supports the effective rollout of this program. One way the government is doing this is via the ‘Consumer Data Rights’ bill, which intends to ensure Australians have the facts they need to find the best solutions across banking products and loans. This will later include energy and telecommunication services as the rollout continues.

The UK approached the implementation with compliance first, understandably working to ensure regulations were being covered off appropriately, however this meant the majority of focus was on technical implementation leaving consumer education as a later priority and perhaps missed opportunity.

Ultimately, the technical innovation here is intended to provide a better customer experience and to put the knowledge into the consumers hands, however without a good understanding of why their data is needing to be accessed, there isn’t a driver for uptake for consumers.

When the program launched, the UK banking sector had minimal accredited third parties geared to access the data, this meant almost no testing was completed to ensure the business needs were being covered appropriately and this had a negative impact on the end consumer.

Now the market is slowly catching up and putting in place key components including educating consumers, adoption of the new technology, user experience and evolved standards. UK blatantly ignored the CX aspect of the implementation as opposed to AU that has provided a well defined set of  CX guidelines – however each party is free to interpret these standards and implement a solution accordingly. ACCC has made a reasonable assumption here that it is in the participants interest to provide good CX to their customers.

Although the UK has struggled to phase open banking into its market with all components included, the goal is to have open banking be dependable, scalable and seamless so that consumers can enjoy the benefits of real time data, and access to services that they truly need.

It took around six months to get open banking kicked off in the UK and a number of years for transactional operation, and now the banking sector is completing millions of transactions each month via this new initiative. The stats show a steady growth curve, which shows that although the UK got off to a slow start, consumers are working with this and echoing its benefits in an increasing fashion.

The upside is Australia has a lot to learn from the UK rollout, and although we can expect rollout to continue to move relatively slowly, customers will begin to resonate with the idea to share financial information if it is truly going to benefit their experience and provide them with the key services they are looking for.

Australia is among the first countries adopting the open banking framework, meaning we are at the epicentre of the learning curve of trusted data exchange, which is an approach that puts the customer first. As this rolls out, consumers will learn that consent must be required for any data to pass through, and that any automated machine component cannot continue its process without consumer consent.

The balancing act for businesses like Innovo, who are rolling out an open banking framework in collaboration with financial enterprises, will be to ensure there are efficient resources to handle compliance whilst also responding to and inspiring customers with new data capabilities that lead to tangible benefits for them. Like any new industry or operation standard, if the industry can educate well, consumers will enjoy the move toward a machine-automated future, knowing they have clear objectives in how their data is being used.

In order for businesses to survive and do well in this current crisis, quick and effective measures must be taken. Business continuity strategies as well as learning how to make your business adaptive, agile and resilient is key.

Download Innovo’s latest whitepaper on corporate resiliency strategies and how to come out of major disruption and pandemics a stronger organisation.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Australia and the world have been in a bit of chaos, recently. The topic of the day is COVID-19 and, ultimately, how that affects the commercial environment and traditional working styles. IT teams and budgets all across the country are currently in disarray and the question is how these rapid changes impact the business from an Agile/DevOps perspective.

Here at Innovo, we agree that COVID-19 and new remote working will be a stress test for Agile and DevOps methodologies. There is a risk of backsliding and reverting to older ‘Command and Control’ versions of working, which is not ideal given the fluidity of the current working environment. Organisations may react out of fear and may now deem project-to-product teams too risky or unreliable. There may be even a desire to reverse such changes. Our opinion is that this is not the time for DevOps and Agile to be implemented with haste, as siloed teams perform even worse when everything is remote. The friction of work handoffs is further compounded by distance and poor internet connectivity.

So where is DevOps at today and what are some of the fundamentals companies need to review?

There is no doubt that DevOps (and its variants) are becoming ‘normalised’ within IT. Such publications as the World Quality Report (2019) are trumpeting statistics such as “all but 1% of (WQR respondents) organisations are now using DevOps practices”.

When more than 1200 respondents globally are talking about actually doing DevOps as opposed to just thinking about it, it does bear the thought “are they really doing DevOps, and what are the challenges being faced”.

Both anecdotally and based on statistics available, there are concerns being raised on several fronts, not which of least are:

• Is there too much focus on speed, over cost, quality and consideration of remote working?
• How has risk management kept pace with a changing dynamic and global pandemic disruption?
• What about testing/QA?
• What about Security? Companies have an expanded surface now with remote workers.
• Is automation working effectively?

The answers to the above are as diverse as the clients and their ecosystems, and where we have undertaken engagements with our clients, we do see challenges around:

• Software testing has changed, and there are challenges with how to go about it, especially now;
• Automation, in particular, is a big issue, especially with the constant change vs maintenance dynamic;
• Losing sight of the goals of DevOps, with it morphing into something that must be performed in its own right as opposed to focusing on goals or implementing risky reactive measures to ensure business continuity; and
• The lust for speed over everything else.

Getting back to basics is a worthwhile exercise. Assuming for the moment that you have decided DevOps is the way to go (or alternatively review your DevOps practice to date given the circumstances), there are key fundamentals that need to be of focus:

• Why are we doing DevOps? What are the benefits we are looking for? Will it help us ride out this global pandemic and work style change?
• Is our organisation DevOps ready? How do we know? Have we undertaken some mechanism to verify where we are, and are not ready?
• Do we have a strategy? For organisational change, communications, tools, automation. What about testing and security?
• Do we have a set of principles that are front of mind? Are we starting small(ish)? Do we already have a lean and experimental mindset?
• Is this being driven top down/do we have active executive buy-in? How much does the leadership team know about business continuity in remote working?
• Have we adapted our testing practices to suite our velocity? Have we thought about unit tests being expanded to include I/O and/or point to point integration? Have we automated our testing (functional, performance, security)? Are we too focused on coverage of tests rather than targeted testing?
• What’s our appetite for risk? Does our DevOps practice align with an overarching risk model?
• Do we have the appropriate integrated toolchain? Do they support advanced communications and remote working?

There is no silver bullet when it comes down to implementing DevOps, and frankly if anyone tells you otherwise this need to be treated with an appropriate level of scepticism. There will be issues, challenges, even re-starts required on occasion, especially now. If you keep to your defined principles and goal, you will find you can get the DevOps not only that you want, but what you need.

Stay Tuned for our upcoming webinar on “DevOps in the Age of Disruption”.

Written by Sean Twyford

Sydney, 25^th March 2020  Innovo Technology Solutions, a testing and software development consultancy, has today announced its partnership with MuleSoft to provide consulting services for MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™. Anypoint Platform unlocks the power of API-led connectivity, enabling organizations to connect apps, data and devices more rapidly and efficiently.

MuleSoft provides the leading platform for building application networks. Innovo Technology Solutions’ implementation expertise and industry knowledge, coupled with MuleSoft’s technology, gives clients the support and tools they need to harness the rapidly growing number of apps and data sources. With Anypoint Platform, organizations can unlock new revenue channels, improve customer experiences and drive innovation.

“With the rise of cloud enablement and digital transformations, the need for connected systems across legacy and digital apps is crucial now more than ever. To successfully transform, build and operate a digital environment, Australian enterprises need future-proofed development, testing and integration capabilities,” said Nick Finlayson, Director and Co-Founder, Innovo Technology Solutions.

“By partnering with MuleSoft, the Innovo service team are able to offer integrated software development and testing services, as well as secure data transfer for critical and non-mission critical data that moves in-between legacy and digital applications. Our partnership with MuleSoft increases integration capability between environments and while benefiting the organisation from an operational standpoint.”

With a team of over 50 technology specialists across Australia and overseas, the Innovo team has seen major advances in software development and testing. The team incorporates the latest and most innovative technology in their projects, while implementing devOps methodology and agile practises.

“We were attracted to the MuleSoft value proposition due to their focus on cloud integration and connectivity of SaaS applications. The flexibility of the API-led approach to connectivity in Anypoint Platform enables our customers to address the historical challenges of secure data integration in a quick and simple way. When we apply this to our customer sites, it allows them to focus more on their business and get more out of their technology investments.” comments Finlayson.

“As an organisation, we know that understanding and implementing an efficient software and integration system is not just about the technology. Installing a tool can get you quick wins, but an efficient program is continuously improved and matured to ensure lasting success. We value the MuleSoft technology because it allows us to design and implement future-proofed and flexible software solutions that can scale, and transform, should requirements change.”

“Further to this, we have realised that the problem often involves more than one technology, for example many clients have thousands of applications in their enterprise network, but lack harnessing the full power of these investments because they’re not integrated. With a simple API-centric solution that is overlayed by efficient software and testing, we are able to bring these disparate applications together to improve efficiency.”

“Our customer base in this area is growing and we’re consistently processing and understanding our customers want to use, protect and maximise their technology investments.  With the best of breed technology in our solutions, including MuleSoft, we’re confident that we’ll deliver major digital transformation projects on time and on budget.” concludes Finlayson.

“With the explosion of disparate technologies today, connecting them all quickly and efficiently is the key to gaining a competitive edge. Through its partnership with MuleSoft, Innovo Technology Solutions is enabling its customers to create a dynamic application network to achieve their goals and accelerate their pace of business,” said Brent Hayward, senior vice president of global channels and alliances, MuleSoft. “We’re pleased to welcome Innovo Technology Solutions into MuleSoft’s partner ecosystem and look forward to working together to deliver significant business impact to our mutual customers.”

As a MuleSoft Partner, Innovo Technology Solutions helps clients address on-premises, cloud and hybrid integration use cases with scale and ease of use.

ABOUT INNOVO TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS:

Innovo began disrupting the software development and testing industry across Australia and New Zealand in early 2017 with a focus on providing best-of-breed technology delivered by expert Testing, DevOps and Project Management professionals. Innovo’s people bring deep sector-focused knowledge to client projects, to help them mitigate risks, lower total cost of operations and open up revenue streams out of their technology investments. Innovo’s agile methodologies and technology partnerships can connect customers to provide on-demand technology solutions with deep expertise and trusted delivery.

www.innovotech.com

Sydney, 17 March 2020 Innovo Technology Solutions, a testing and software development consultancy, has recently appointed former Capgemini CEO, Paul Thorley, as their Chairman and Executive Director.

Paul re-joins the two principal co-founders of Innovo who share an extensive history in building the Capgemini team across Australia and New Zealand.

Paul has a strong background in building cross-functional teams in the enterprise technology sector and has an impresive work history across APJ in his time as CEO of Capgemini.

Paul has worked with many leading Fortune 500, government and ASX listed companies. He brings a wealth of strategic and consumer insights for businesses that are struggling in this rapidly shifting digital space.

“We originally met Paul when Capgemini acquired our business NuSolutions over ten years ago. As a leadership team we took the $10m business and achieved 10x profitable growth over the next five years with a combination of strategy, timing and hard work,” -comments Innovo co-founder and director Nick Finlayson. “The opportunity to join forces again under the Innovo brand while the market is demanding reliable digital transformation technology partners and open banking solutions, was too good to miss.”

In his role as Chairman and Executive Director Paul will work with the Innovo board to set effective strategy and deliver on commitments, while focusing on future-proofed solutions that are customer centric.

“Our long-term strategy for Innovo is to continuously develop our operating model, empower our staff and deepen our strategic partner relationships in order to be one of the acknowledged leaders in modern IT delivery for our clients,” -Thorley comments.

“Our clients across the private and public sectors are the mid-to-large scale organisations that are all wrestling with data silos, failed cloud enablement and complex forms of digital transformation. To stay competitive and relevant in technology they need reliable, efficient and innovative technology partners that can deliver in an ever-evolving technology landscape. We’ve also got expertise and partnerships to deliver open banking models across the finance sector, which we are in the process of delivering right now.”

“Innovo delivers those solutions to our existing customers and we intend on expanding that capability by applying the best DevOps, Testing and Agile professionals who deliver reliably across various technologies, automated tools and methodology.” -Thorley concludes.

Paul’s appointment to the board is part of the latest strategic changes at Innovo which has recently undergone a rebrand and buy-out under the Enex Consulting business, as well as signing partnerships with key vendors including Mulesoft.

“Our customers across all sectors are looking for innovative yet reliable technology solutions to drive their business,” comments Finlayson. “We are committed to investing in the right talent, automated technology and methodologies to help our clients mitigate risk, reduce costs and improve revenue streams. We’re thrilled to have Paul on board and look forward to the continued growth of our team over the coming months.”

ABOUT INNOVO TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS:

Innovo began disrupting the software development and testing industry across Australia and New Zealand in early 2017 with a focus on providing best-of-breed technology delivered by expert Testing, DevOps and Project Management professionals. Innovo’s people bring deep sector-focused knowledge to client projects, to help them mitigate risks, lower total cost of operations and open up revenue streams out of their technology investments. Innovo’s agile methodologies and technology partnerships can connect customers to provide on-demand technology solutions with deep expertise and trusted delivery.

Sydney, 11^th March 2020 Innovo Technology Solutions, a testing and software development consultancy, has recently launched a re-brand and service overhaul to market after separating from Enex Test Labs.

Led by former Capgemini executives, Nick Finlayson and Abdullah Aksu, the company was formerly known as Enex Consulting, and was the sister company of Enex Test Labs. After separating from the Enex Test Lab group, the experienced IT leaders have re-launched the brand under Innovo Technology Solutions.

“Innovo Technology Solutions was set up as a request from a couple of major clients to help them service their project needs in testing and development,” comments Director Nick Finlayson, “with a huge initial success, we’ve found customer requests have broadened to services outside of Testing. So, we’ve widened our service offering to fulfil DevOps, Mulesoft, Salesforce and Data Management services.”

With an impressive history in building professional services consultancies, Finlayson and business partner Abdullah Aksu have built a number of successful professional services consultancies across Australia.

“As a leadership team, we’ve built successful organisations that are focused on a strong culture and investment in our people. We have built Innovo the same way – we have hired the best we know and through continual training and redevelopment of all staff we can be relevant and offer the services to clients in an agile way via our global delivery model.”

With a team of experienced Testing, Development and Project Services consultants across Sydney and Melbourne, the Innovo business is set to sky-rocket in 2020 alongside the addition of some heavyweight IT services leadership members.

“We see a lack of technical skills and agile application as the major barrier to successful digital transformation for most of our customers in the private and public sector.  Our customers across all sectors are looking for innovative yet reliable technology solutions to drive their business.”

“We are committed to investing in the right talent, automated technology and methodologies to help our clients mitigate risk, reduce costs and improve revenue streams.” Finlayson concludes.

ABOUT INNOVO TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS:

Innovo began disrupting the software development and testing industry across Australia and New Zealand in late 2015 with a focus on providing best-of-breed technology delivered by expert Testing, DevOps and Project Management professionals. Innovo’s people bring deep sector-focused knowledge to client projects, to help them mitigate risks, lower total cost of operations and open up revenue streams out of their technology investments. Innovo’s agile methodologies and technology partnerships can connect customers to provide on-demand technology solutions with deep expertise and trusted delivery.

How implementation of open banking can increase your competitive advantage.

If you haven’t heard what open banking is keep reading because now is the time to act. In a world where technology is involving itself in all sectors, the merger of the banking and technology sectors is particularly notable. Traditionally the banking and finance sectors have been required to be ‘tight-lipped’ and meticulously protective of their assets. Now moving into a more -open- world, banks are challenged with the progressively changing requirements. They are now required to ensure they are constantly innovating, implementing new services and technologies for their customers all whilst maintaining compliance. To keep up they must take lead from the tech sector, they must adopt open architectures. Adopting open banking will ensure you not only keep up with your competitors but give you an advantage over those who don’t embrace it. 

Embracing APIs

APIs aren’t going anywhere. They are the primary mechanism for building open platforms. Industry veterans, Google, Facebook, Amazon and the likes, along with smaller start-ups are allowing third-party companies to use APIs to access and alter their platforms and code. Giving access to such information and assets to peers may seem contradictory – in some cases this information ends up with competitors – however the results from embracing this way of sharing is significant. You are able to continuously innovate at speed keeping up with the market or moving first. There is the opportunity to consistently develop new products and services, not to mention the openness to sharing knowledge and technology.

Why Now?   

Soon – very soon – open banking and APIs will be standard, there are wheels-in-motion to make it so. In 2016 a Payment Services Directive (PDS2) was released in the EU included standards and guidelines for the use of APIs – it mandates banks open their APIs to third-parties. Australia has now followed suit with the Consumer Data Right legislation that was passed this year the aim to improve consumers’ ability to compare and switch between products and services. It will also encourage competition between service providers, leading not only to better prices for customers but also more innovative products and services. This is classified as “Open Banking” legislation in Australia. Under Open Banking, consumers will be able to access and safely transfer their banking data to trusted parties. Open Banking will be introduced in phases, with basic product information to be available from 1 July 2019.

Not only is regulation driving this change a study from IDC note “Six in 10 banks are open to partnering with financial technology firms (fintechs).”  Traditionally fintechs were seen as competitors to big banks, however embracing these start-ups as collaborators means they can work together, co-develop and create new ways to innovate and grow, all enabled by APIs. 

How can you become open?

In recent years we have seen most big banks become more agile, however generally speaking. Their development processes and architectures can be rigid as they are designed and built for large scale. By appreciating the value of open banking, banks need to leverage old architectures with contemporary approaches. By introducing open technologies and architecture, banks will see an acceleration in the implementation of APIs.

By identifying, training and hiring the right consultants’ banks can work towards attaining major improvements in open technology. These consultants must provide daily updates and adjustments to these new technologies, a vastly different approach to outdated models of the past. 

With the right team the next three steps should be taken:

Create Internally used APIs

By using existing software and architecture banks must create APIs that are simple and – most importantly – for internal use at this stage. By approaching from the inside out, the API code is written for the business by the business and minimise scope creep that can come if considering external factors when developing how the APIs will be used to the general public. This way, the API code foundation can be deployed and adopted quickly to ensure speed to market, and later evolved to meet external functionality requirements.

Build a core team across your organisation 

The focus here is to build a core team, across all internal business functions that concentrate on open banking. The team should include leaders, developers and programmers. This core team can work collaboratively to identify opportunities that can be acted on to create new technologies. A key area to look at would be micro-services. 

External community

With the internal team and APIs in place the bank can now start to engage with the external community. This can be with a pre-existing external community or the bank can build their own external community. By building a new community the bank can engage with external developers who share, build on or create new technology platforms that the bank and its customers have access to.

Banks are now turning to the technology industry to adopt new ways of thinking and improving their banking software. This new way of thinking, with the implementation of the above, can produce new, faster and advanced developments for banks and their customers. 

Is your organisation looking towards getting proactive with the new Open Banking standards of Australia? 

Here at Enex Consulting we have been instrumental in providing the strategy and thinking around best approach to testing the Open Banking ecosystem, governing it and running the testing regime on a day to day basis, including test automation, in partnership with our clients.

We work with Australia’s leading enterprises to transform their organisations via technology leading strategy, testing and development services. Enex Consulting was formed in 2014 by industry veterans from the enterprise software delivery and testing industry in partnership with a number of specific clients to address the lack of high-quality engagements currently offered in the market.  We specialise in large program delivery, testing strategy and capability / maturity assessments, DevOps alignment and organisational digital transformations.

We specialise in delivering our clients program objectives by partnering with them to transform their existing IT landscapes into their future Digital Vision on time and within budget.

To learn more please contact us.

We all know the importance of QA but does your CIO and the team of C-level executives really care?

Understandably the executive and development teams have differing priorities, however, testing should be taken seriously across the whole organisation. By completing well managed testing of your products early, often and consistently, your product will ultimately get to market faster. It also reduces instances of defective software resulting in unsatisfied users. With the right testing strategy in place, you can avoid costly errors, inspire further innovation and get to market sooner meaning higher revenue.

Most importantly, your CIO is more concerned about operational viability, capex reduction and operational efficiency rather than technical granularity of testing and deployment. Below, we have outlined some 5 key arguments related to the concerns of your CIO that will help them understand the importance of testing:

1. Mitigate unsatisfied users

To reduce the risk of customers doing the testing for you, you need to do the right testing and properly before it goes to market. Pro-active and real time monitoring of production logs to have a continuous feedback loop into the regression testing regime can help prevent critical customer experience issues. If not mitigated this can lead to high user dissatisfaction resulting in revenue loss and the potential for any data saved in your software to be breached. The solution? Do risk-based testing for optimum coverage and CX testing to focus on end consumer before it gets to market.

2. Automated Testing to ensure a good ROI

Testing is imperative to ensure the money spent on development is well spent. There is no point having your CIO pour money into developing without actually testing to see if the new product is doing what it’s meant to.

Ensuring your new software delivers as planned to your requirements and using automated testing is the simplest way to ensure the money you have spent developing and engineering this product was, in fact, well spent. Testing in phases will ensure the final product is worth the investment.

3. Invest in consistent and repeatable testing and tooling

The most common phase in testing is in the final stages of development. This is a valid phase to complete testing, however, good developers know testing needs to be done earlier and more frequently. If anything major is uncovered in the final phase, or something as simple as being understaffed for any reason can have a major impact on your release date. Being on time in such a competitive market is imperative.

4. Invest in your testers

Having a team of expert testers is imperative to the efficiency of your testing process and development as a whole. In many cases developers are left with the duties of carrying out the testing. From a CIO perspective this may seem efficient, however, development and testing require two different skill sets.

Whilst employing developers who can also test can be seen as beneficial, asking any employee to move between two job types will always decrease their efficiency and therefore the project efficiency. Developers also, generally speaking, lack the ability to test from the user perspective. We advise cross training your testers to be multi-disciplinary (ie BA tester or SDET) and to have a sufficient knowledge management system to avoid single point dependencies.

5. Expert testers give real-time feedback

Having a dedicated team of testers also ensures you get real-time feedback on your product. Performing testing early on in the development process can ensure adequate feedback from a user perspective on what works, needs fixing or if anything is just not achievable.

Conversely, receiving this feedback in the final stage of development means there could be a fundamental issue that could lead to major redevelopment that could have been rectified earlier in the process if detected. Alternatively, if this feedback is missed altogether and comes back from the customer, this will reduce user satisfaction and any potential redevelopment becomes very costly.

There are numerous benefits to testing consistently and repetitively throughout your development process and it is imperative your C-level executives understand these benefits too. Working together to ensure the software you are creating is delivering as promised is absolutely critical to the success of your product. Testing ensures you have developed the perfect product you set out to produce.

Enex Consulting was formed in 2014 by industry veterans from the enterprise software delivery and testing industry in partnership with a number of specific clients to address the lack of high-quality engagements currently offered in the market. We specialise in large program delivery, testing strategy and capability / maturity assessments, DevOps alignment and organisational digital transformations.

We specialise in delivering our clients program objectives by partnering with them to transform their existing IT landscapes into their future Digital Vision on time and within budget.