Now more than ever, consumers and businesses alike are relying on digital experiences to deliver critical services, maintain normalcy, and provide comfort in uncertain times. From food delivery to video conferencing, streaming services to online banking, the shift to digital-first solutions has been accelerated. And with that shift, it is clear that digital confidence is poised to take the spotlight as a key enabler for organizations that want to grow their business.
Digital confidence is the idea that everyone in your organization, from leadership all the way down to the developers writing the code, expects that the applications they create function, look, and perform exactly as intended. Organizations that can create a culture and processes that are committed to this idea see a number of positive effects, including:
Improved productivity - with digital confidence, engineering teams are empowered to continually innovate and build features that customers want. They can then introduce those changes quickly without fear of breaking anything.
Better user experience - digital confidence has the power to permeate your entire business, and that trickles down to your users. Customers who have a great experience with your application are more likely to return, creating reliable repeat business. This leads to the third benefit.
Increased revenue - digitally confident organizations enjoy loyal customer bases, but those that take it one step further are able to create those customers across every channel. Ensuring your application covers web and mobile platforms (every browser, operating system and device combination) gives organizations the ability to reach more markets, and capture more revenue.
This idea isn’t just a theory. There are digital organizations today that are experiencing the above benefits, and more, as they implement practices that build digital confidence.
Quick Base Removes Testing Bottlenecks to Accelerate Release Velocity
Quick Base provides a low-code application development platform that allows non-technical developers to create secure cloud applications without compromising IT governance and control. As they adapted their development pipeline to accelerate releases, they realized that testing was a major bottleneck. With a UI regression suite that would take upwards of five hours to complete, they were prevented from creating the fast feedback loops the team needed to deliver more features and capabilities to customers quickly.
By automating a large subset of tests in Selenium and WebDriver, and using Sauce Labs to run those tests at scale, Quick Base is now running that same UI regression in 15 minutes. This means that they can run these tests not just at the end of the development cycle, but every time a developer checks in code. “We find issues early in the pipeline because we can run tests in parallel,” explains Ken LaBak, a Senior Software Engineer in Test at Quick Base, “The teams get feedback much more quickly, and we can address issues before they ever get into our production environment.”
This type of fast feedback creates confidence across the entire organization, as they are empowered to deliver features at speed, knowing that there are quality checks built in to ensure the user experience is flawless. Creating this level of digital confidence has helped Quick Base not just in their everyday business, but has also helped them lead the way in the era of COVID-19. To learn more about how Quick Base’s digital confidence has helped in times of need, check out this SauceCon Online talk from Karen Motyka, Director of QA at Quick Base, “Fighting a Pandemic with Software Quality.“
N26 Creates Creates Flawless Experiences in Their Mobile Banking Application
Founded in Berlin in 2013, the mobile bank N26 has redesigned banking for the smartphone, making it easy, fast, transparent and contemporary. An early player in the mobile-first banking space, they had a unique opportunity to capture new users to gain market share in a competitive industry. And they knew that manual testing was going to prevent them from reaching their goals.
Coupled with an initiative to automate their tests using Appium, the team at N26 relied on the Sauce Labs Real Device Cloud to provide access to the devices that they needed to ensure the best experience for all of their users. But while some teams think of testing benefits in terms of infrastructure cost or time savings, N26 understands the larger picture of creating digital confidence. According to Martyna Wojna, Quality Assurance Engineer at N26, “The main benefits to our business are continuous releases and happier customers.” Improved productivity gives teams the confidence that they are delivering the best experiences to their customers, and customers inherit that confidence. That has a long lasting effect on the health of the business, as N26 continues to build a growing base of loyal users.
Building Digital Confidence for Your Team
After reading these real world stories you might be ready to start building digital confidence for your organization. But many might wonder where exactly they can start. The road to digital confidence is long, and it takes buy-in from every level of the organization. Those teams that are successful in their journeys are the ones that are able to tie testing directly back to key business drivers, such as productivity, user experience, or revenue. If you can make those connections, and show how an improved quality strategy can accelerate gains in these categories, then you are well on your way.
Sauce Labs offers a number of resources to help you build a case for digital confidence. Visit our website, where we have research demonstrating the value of better customer experiences, reports on the ROI of continuous testing, and more stories like the ones above. Using resources like these as your guide, you’ll be on the path to digital confidence in no time.
