How Quality Software Can Lead to Business Success

Do you have a business that you want to grow? Do you have dedicated business software that helps you accomplish your business goals?

Software is the new star feature of most businesses around the world. It is the trend even in conventional industries, such as banking and finance, energy, and commercial companies. Software’s role in significant enterprise goes beyond typical systems of data collection and documentation. It evolved into becoming the revenue catalyst and driver to increase customer satisfaction and, ultimately, to become the key to business success.

Today’s software innovation allows vehicles to have network connections through smart devices. Homeowners can even control appliances in their homes even when outside the premises. Companies that invested in customer engagement preference through software-driven business models have the edge of creating smart strategies to build better relationships with their consumers. It also lets businesses be more proactive in boosting profit, developing new revenue tactics, and improving service opportunities.

The Role of Software to Businesses

All businesses are now into software use. The few who put their attention to improving their software quality will secure their place in the future of each enterprise. Software developers gather various tools to come about with new programs for different business needs. This process should require less time and money while boosting the efficiency of the business workforce.

Software created specifically for a business has a well-designed structure to ensure that it meets both the company and consumer needs. From a business perspective, the software can help to lower, if not remove, the factor of human error, which increases the company’s reliability, consistency, and effectiveness. Its role is essential for fulfilling business tasks and generating documentation for every activity accomplished. Also, business software can assist in lowering the workload of specific business roles and also reducing the effort and turnaround time of essential business tasks.

The primary goal of having a software dedicated for your business is to maintain and properly manage it. It is one of your most vital investments as it helps to manage the entire organization, its tasks, and also to be your monitoring and tracking aid. However, take note that the complexity of a business software varies based on the organization’s and business’s size and needs. However, take note that only high-quality software can help you reach your business goals.

Here are the three top reasons for how quality software can lead you to your business success.

#1 Shortened Software Release Cycle

To be at par with customer expectations and to have the opportunity to invest in new market opportunities, businesses should be agile enough to keep up with the fast evolution of software demand, while maintaining the release of high-quality software. According to Statista, Google’s Play Store now offers nearly 2.6 million apps this 2020, which is almost triple its number from July 2013’s 1 million censuses. The information also shows that Apple’s App Store takes the second spot with more than 1.8 million apps. The third-place goes to Windows Store at more than 600,000 apps. A breakthrough, though, is the fourth spot, which goes to an online marketplace platform, the Amazon Appstore, at approximately 450,000 apps.

Now, with such a high number of apps available in the market, ensuring the release of software in a quick manner without compromising its quality is essential. Companies race to increase their IT department’s budget to boost quality and assurance efforts. The World Quality Report 2017-2018 on software quality assurance and testing states that by 2020, there will be about a 32% increase in various companies’ IT budgets. The study also provided several points that should be given attention to lower the turnaround time for a software release. Their key recommendations are:

●     Investment in AI-based testing and QA platforms

●     Formulate a well-designed testing and QA plan for enterprise-level QA analytics

●     Adapt a software test data management procedure to increase support for the DevOps and testing team

Let’s say, for example, you are in the banking industry. Major companies such as Chase, Capital One, and Wells Fargo are gaining the top rank. How? All these companies have the capability to develop, release, and maintain high-quality apps. Their confidence in their agile development methods enhances their testing integration to affect their software development life cycle positively. The switch to agile allows a business to do software development, testing, and successful release in a more synergistic way that helps them to respond quickly to customers’ changing demands.

#2 Lowers the Risk of Multi-feature Software

There is no denying that when a company launches its software, what customers look for are its features. Companies often develop software or apps that offer various features to make sure to meet customer satisfaction in all aspects. In highly secured industries, such as banking and finance, an increased risk for data leakage from one poor software feature can bring about disastrous business consequences. More often than not, poorly tested, and developed software features lead to increased risks for the company.

Now, the solution to lower the risk of multi-feature software is to prioritize improving its quality. Before, the quality of the software developed only lies to the testing team’s hands. With the All team testing approach and usage of test case management tools, a shared responsibility among all roles can be appropriately delegated. Everyone involved in the creation, development, and testing of the software can be granted permission to see and take actions according to the role assigned to them in the testing tool. Because of this scenario, the testing team can assure that each testing software feature is of high quality before the release to its end-users.

#3 Poor Quality Software Equals Higher Business Loss

Software quality is vital to every business. The owners, stakeholders, and management have a good insight into this cause. But a good understanding and the ability to recognize how high-quality software looks is one thing. Plus, another concern is how the business allots an investment of time, money, and effort to develop and release high-quality products to its customers.

However, the painful truth is that while some executives know how high-quality software impacts the business, it is still not included in some companies’ top priority. This problem can translate to the release of poor quality software, which can cause higher company loss than expected.

Serious consequences, which mostly entails financial and marketing damages, come from poor-quality software. While minor hiccups may not harm the company’s reputation, significant concerns, such as data breach, can cause grave harm that can significantly lower the customer’s confidence in the company.

Let’s put it in a simple perspective. Every year, various companies worldwide allot a massive budget of around $300 billion to debug their software, according to a study conducted by Cambridge University’s Judge Business School in 2013. Another research by Parasoft published last 2016 stated that the stock price for businesses that had software failure that reached the public through wide-spread news went down for approximately 4% on the average. Moreover, if its users experienced multiple software failures, about 5.7% stock price decline was seen. These figures meant a $2.7 billion loss for companies.

These are not ordinary paper losses for the company. These are representations of billions of dollars wasted, which should have been used to improve other areas of the business, including the development of the software.

Therefore, poor software quality translates to a real financial loss for every company. The perfect way to prevent this risk is for companies or businesses to invest in software testing and test case management tools. Integration with various project management or tracking tools may also improve the smoothness of the testing process, which will make way for the testing team to allot more time to improve the quality of their software before its release.

Bottom Line: Better Quality, Higher Success Rate

Quality is not a matter to be left out. It is vital to all your business aspects, including the company’s software, especially if it is released for consumer use. Keep in mind that being of high quality is not just crucial to testers, software creators, developers, or typical IT companies. It is now a vital factor to ensure the success of businesses in a competitive environment, where consumers require high-quality yet easy-to-understand and navigate software platforms.

Therefore, stakeholders in every business must have software quality assurance as one of their top priority projects. The management should also encourage the software developers and testing teams to use test case management tools to lessen the development life cycle. Also,  because more businesses in conventional marketplaces begin to embrace the utilization of apps, the pressure to provide high-quality apps with many features increases. On the other hand, take note that poor quality software will just incur damages than profits.

Software testing to ensure quality software is not just an additional financial expense. It is a significant business factor that every organization needs because it can boost its vital stock value, help the company avoid substantial losses, and eventually lead to your business success.