eMoney Advisor Scales Mobile, Cross-Browser, and Visual Testing with Sauce Labs

eMoney Advisor provides technology solutions and services that help people talk about money. Rooted in comprehensive financial planning, more than 106,000 financial professionals across firms of all sizes use the eMoney platform to serve more than 5.8 million households throughout the U.S. Nearly 800 employees – including 70 QA engineers – support this mission.  

Back in 2018, eMoney Advisor was already a responsive application. Chuan Au, Vice President of Quality Assurance, and his team thus had to test across both desktop and mobile devices to feel confident they were shipping quality software, which was critical for delivering optimal digital experiences to both financial advisors and their clients. 

Up until this point, Chuan’s team had relied on manual functional testing on Windows laptops, which forced them to simulate/emulate devices by resizing browser screens — a process that utilized valuable resources. eMoney Advisor did have a limited number of mobile devices, but they were only available to select employees in different locations, which made it difficult to scale. 

Acutely aware of how fast technology changes, Chuan felt the costs of procuring, updating, and maintaining devices in-house was no longer sustainable. eMoney Advisor was also in the midst of transitioning to a remote-first company. Chuan now needed a solution for supplying devices to QA teams in multiple locations. 

As a SaaS company, eMoney Advisor undergoes rigorous security audits to keep consumer data safe. The company also protects itself and its clients by conducting regulatory compliance checks and legal reviews during its vendor management process. For Chuan, that made it imperative to find an enterprise vendor with best-in-class security certifications. Specifically, the vendor would need to deliver dedicated access to private devices in a secure cloud environment. 

After beginning his search for a vendor, it quickly became clear to Chuan that he was interested in more than just device management: He wanted an automated testing platform that would empower his team to run quality tests across devices, operating systems, and browsers. He also realized that, because his teams operated across time zones, they would need 24/7/365 access to testing capabilities.

Finally, as a member of an agile software development team, Chuan was accountable for minimizing the number of defects that escaped into production. To deliver quality without compromising on velocity, his team needed to find issues early in the SDLC and then prioritize and debug quickly with simple insights. Only then could they deliver on their promise.

Shortly after Chuan kicked off his search for a testing platform, he found himself frustrated. Most of the solutions on the market were missing what he believed were mission-critical features. One vendor did not offer the breadth of tools needed to achieve continuous testing across the entire SDLC. Another didn’t offer robust device management capabilities, which was an obvious deal-breaker. From an operational perspective, every option he encountered felt cumbersome to implement. This experience reinforced his desire for an all-in-one platform. 

Then he discovered Sauce Labs, and soon realized that its comprehensive testing suite met all of his criteria. With Sauce Labs in his team’s corner, they could test across real and virtual devices, operating systems, and browsers. This would not only increase test scenarios but also keep operating costs down — something that strongly appealed to him. Plus, he would be able to swap devices in and out based on market trends — a level of flexibility he appreciated. 

Sauce Labs also met the strict security requirements that were essential for financial technology companies like eMoney Advisor, by offering best-in-class certifications, including SOC 3, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and ISO 27701. SauceConnect helped establish multiple tunnels to seamlessly link their internal network, enabling comprehensive and secure testing across various test environments and user sites. Sauce Labs private devices provided eMoney Advisor 24/7 dedicated device access in a secure cloud environment, along with better device management and customizations to suit their business needs.

As a quality assurance testing veteran, Chuan was delighted to learn that Sauce Labs was co-founded by Jason Huggins, who co-created both the Selenium and Appium testing frameworks. For Chuan, this signaled that Sauce Labs would never cease to innovate — something that turned out to be true. Five years later, eMoney Advisor remains a loyal customer.

Since partnering with Sauce Labs, eMoney Advisor has evolved from zero mobile app automation to a comprehensive automated testing suite — maximizing test coverage and significantly scaling mobile, browser, and visual testing. 

With Sauce Labs, eMoney Advisor’s quality assurance program achieved immense scale and efficiency. By increasing its physical iOS and Android device coverage by 50% and virtual device coverage by 37%, and implementing automated visual testing that can detect pixel-by-pixel differences, the company can now more quickly identify software bugs earlier in the development process — and test cost-effectively. 

Throughout eMoney Advisor’s journey, the Sauce Labs team was extremely responsive to time-sensitive needs. Any time Chuan needed to quickly ramp up devices, the team assigned to his account delivered. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in March 2020, Sauce Labs made it possible for eMoney Advisor to transition all its employees, including his team, to working remotely — without compromising their productivity by having access to mobile test devices and test tools available from any location. 

Lori Henderson, Director of Quality Assurance at eMoney Advisor — a key member of Chuan’s team — has observed notable performance improvements since implementing Sauce Labs.