5 Key Benefits Of Test Automation For Enterprises

By Author: Michael Wade
Total Articles: 67
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Software, either in the form of a web based service or a mobile based application, has become immensely popular and universal. Consequently, a poor quality software or application can lead to customer dissatisfaction, loss of revenue and brand equity, increase in litigation costs, and numerous other fallouts where customers use the software to carry out crucial tasks like banking.

As an antidote to such eventualities, businesses are fine tuning their testing processes by adopting Test Automation. This is because by establishing a Test Automation Framework an enterprise can leverage many benefits in the form of identification of hidden errors, reusability of test suite, quicker test and release phases, better deployment of human resources, better quality software, increased customer satisfaction, and a rise in profits.

In the digital era, where trillion lines of codes are written to develop a software - ranging from office suites, engineering automated tools, and mobile gaming to the high end domains of military hardware and space technology, the issue of Quality ...
... Assurance cannot be over emphasized.
Poor quality software with glitches can be absolutely damaging for a company’s reputation and a customers’ loss of confidence in the product. The situation has arisen as companies tend to cut costs on quality control in order to become the early bird in the market.

Impact of poor quality software
• Cost of correction: When poor quality software triggers increased customer complaints, a large chunk of employees are forced to spend their productive time in addressing those issues rather than focusing on doing something new. Hence, it makes sense to perform quality control activities on applications before they are delivered to the customers.

• Effect on brand value: Dissatisfied customers can spread the news of a bad quality product real fast, more than what the PR or marketing team of a company can do. Customer distrust can have a lasting impact on the revenue stream and brand equity of a company, as customers will not think twice before moving to a rival product.

• Litigation costs: Affected customers can sue a company if its product(s) impacts their lives in a negative way. Moreover, should a product fall foul of regulatory compliance requirements the consequences can be real damaging.

As business stakeholders realize the scale of damage poor quality software can bring upon the company, quality control is made central to the overall scheme. Besides, in order to ensure the delivery of better quality software in real quick time, the use of Agile or DevOps gains traction. This brings into focus Software Test Automation wherein quality issues on account of manual testing are addressed.

Five key benefits of Test Automation

1. Saving time and money: Automated Application Testing can drastically cut down time and resources that are typically spent on manual testing. Besides, since innumerable test iterations can be carried out practically unattended, the concerned manpower can be deployed on other focus areas.

2. Scope of testing: With Test Automation more features of an application can be checked in lesser time. You are able to enhance test coverage. Also, in DevOps Test Automation quality issues are identified and addressed in the development phase itself leading to a faster release cycle.

3. Reusability: Automation Testing Experts can reconfigure, put to scale or reuse the Test Automation process to check and validate other applications as well.

4. Consistency: In manual testing, approaches to testing can differ with people thus impacting the quality of software. However, with Test Automation Framework the best approach is selected and done thoroughly. This leads to better quality software.

5. Data confidentiality: In the absence of a test database, manual testers are often forced to perform tests on live data. This approach can lead to the exposure of sensitive data. However, through Software Test Automation a copy of the database can be created upon which repeat tests can be carried out. This approach maintains data confidentiality.