How QA providers help telecom companies overcome 21st century challenges
Three decades ago, the advent of mobile phones made telecom business extremely profitable. Today, digital transformation makes their life rife with challenges.
In today’s blog post we examine the most vital telecom challenges and ways to overcome them with the help of Software Testing and Quality Assurance companies.
What challenges make telcos’ life difficult?
Seamless infrastructure
Flexible, dynamic, and scalable infrastructure is the need of the hour for the communication companies. Without it, embedding of any smart solution will be impossible.
It’s also important to take into account that various services provided by the telco put different demands to the network, sometimes – the opposite. For example, those subscribers who use communication device will value the quality of sound and connection speed, while for machine-to-machine devices – that use network resources to communicate – low power consumption and an opportunity to connect multiple devices matter. The speed of the connection is not of high priority for them.
Seamless infrastructure that will allow for developing multiple services is the integral part of the telecom business.
Declining topline
With the boom in the mobile communications industry, telecom companies have to shift from traditional voice and messaging services to new offerings. Otherwise they will run out of business.
For sure, these new services should have no functional snags that will do more harm than good and all efforts will come to naught.
New offerings
Considering the point above, Internet of Things, Mobile Money transactions, OTT services should help retain customer base and increase revenues.
However, the primary goal for any telco is to find out the preferences of new generation. Subscribers today opt for WhatsApp, Skype and other messengers. What do telecom companies have to offer in this connection? For example, they can re-route calls to messenger apps if the subscriber is out of the network coverage area, but is available in the WiFi area.
Another solution is to build business relationship with players from other industries: online retailers, bank and finance services providers, transport and logistics companies.
Participation in Internet of Things projects is also a promising solution. To deal with the IoT ecosystem, telecom companies have to build strong partnerships with the technology providers in the e2e IoT value chain.
Applying to well-established Quality Assurance service providers can help to ease out most of these obstacles.
How QA companies help telcos tackle the challenges
Ensuring quality of the key business products
Business support systems (BSS) and operation support systems (OSS) are software components that are used to run telco business operations towards customers. Proper testing will guarantee that the BSS/OSS solution meet all business and customer requirements.
More and more often telecom providers come to realize that their BSS solutions are not up to new industry challenges and become too costly to support. As a result, telcos undertake modernization and upgrading of the software. In this context, QA providers can help to ensure proper data migration from the legacy system to the target one.
Optimizing QA processes
Professional QA consultants will examine the existing QA process and recommend a plan to improve. They will also develop right test documentation and quality metrics to measure the results. QA consulting team can also implement the proposed solutions, supervise the entire process, addressing any issues that will arise.
As a result, the telco vendor will get a well-set QA process that will fit their type of business and developed solutions.
Supporting innovations
QA and Software Testing providers support communications vendors in their pursuit to launch new services and apps. Timely testing will help the telco to outshine the competition. But this brings forth the need to ensure that new products function properly, are convenient and secure.
Ensuring positive user experience and customer retention
Launching new products isn’t the reason to forget about the tried and tested ones. There are still many customers who use their mobile phones to make calls and send instant messages. Therefore, it’s vital to ensure high performance of the backend infrastructure, develop high-quality IVR menu that will speed up communication with the operator, create positive user experience and increase loyalty of the long-term subscribers.
a1qa eagerly helps telecom industry beat all the challenges. We run a fully functional Center of Excellence in Telecom. The team of the CoE focus on testing all sorts of telecom-related solutions optimizing time-to-market and reducing the number of customer complaints related to quality.
This is what Julia Ilyushenkova, head of the center of excellence, says about the Telecom – QA business prospects:
Many communication companies run their own development and testing departments. However, when the project of the software modernization or upgrading approaches the active phase, the QA team is to be scaled up very often. In this context, managers come to realize that it’s no effective to hire and educate new team members. Outsourcing testing needs to the dedicated team of QA engineers with years’ experience in telecom – is the solution.
Moreover, it’s not that easy to find test automation or data migration pros. As for us, we have a pool of over 100 engineers who perform testing of telecom solutions and can tackle and challenge.
Summing up
Telecom operators should reinvent their roles in the new world as the missed opportunities will cost too much. Obviously, it’s become more difficult to catch up with the industry demands as time goes by.
Seamless infrastructure, high quality of the traditional and new services, and optimized processes – are the key elements to retaining customers and increasing the client base.
And finding a professional QA team that will accompany telco on the journey to success in the 21st century is a good start.
Do you want to stand out in the Telecom industry? Contact our Telecom testing team now. They know how to help you!
