Digitalization Testing: What Changes for the Tester?

Let’s start with defining what Digitalization is. In the simplest words Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a company’s business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business. Digitalization also means the process of making digital everything that can be digitized and the process of converting information into digital format. So the next obvious question you would have would be – How is this different from what was being done earlier? Weren’t systems being computerized earlier too? Well yes, systems and processes were being computerized earlier but the difference is that the computerization was being done in a piece meal basis. The goal earlier was just to move from manual to a computerized way. The goal that Digitalization brings is to improve the operational efficiency (inside facing) of the company and improve the customer experience (outside facing).

Operational efficiency is achieved by transforming the internal operations of the company. The reasoning behind this is to ensure that the organization is nimble, lean, fast and efficient in working. All aspects of the business that can be optimized and digitized are done with the goal of making decisions faster, reduce processes and improve the efficiency.  Customer experience is crucial in the new digital world. Customers switch channels and expect the organization to offer them a seamless interaction irrespective of the medium. Feedback on experience is often shared brutally fast and organizations have to be nimble enough to address them satisfactorily in the shortest amount of time. With so many options available across for each service, the service providers have to ensure that customer experience is delightful, easy, seamless and consistent across the different channels they may be using in order to retain customer stickiness and prevent migration to other competitors. Operational efficiency and customer experience are two sides of the same Digitalization coin.

Now coming back to testing I am sure you can see where the context is getting changed. As a tester previously too we tested to ensure features have been coded as per the specifications, but now as a digitalization tester you need to go deeper and verify whether the process has been optimized to reduce unnecessary steps (in case it is focusing on operational excellence) or whether the ‘customer journey’ is broken, unfriendly and cumbersome (in focusing on customer experience). A feature may have been coded as per specifications, but it may not be the most optimized one and may be having unnecessary delays built in. Similarly a tester has to question whether the customer is getting a seamless, consistent and easy experience using the workflows that are available to him/her. In the new world of ‘digitalization testing’ these additional checks are critical and cannot be missed.

Below I have laid down some of the important “operational excellence” and “customer experience” checks that need to be considered. This is by no means a complete and exhaustive list. The intention is to give you as a tester an idea of the new considerations that need to be included during the course of the testing.

Digital Inside – Operational Excellence

• Are processes and workflows that have been created efficient? 
• Do the existing processes delay decision making?
• Is information made available to the different stakeholders (departments, teams, managers, employees) by the workflows and systems, whenever it is required?
• Are there silos where the information and work is getting blocked and/or lost?
• Is it difficult to see the status of the work in progress?

 Digital Outside – Customer Experience

• Does the customer journey get broken during the course of his/her engagement with your workflows?
• Do customer typically express frustration towards using your interfaces while doing their transactions?
• Do they abandon/drop off from their transactions due to lack of clarity or it being difficult to conclude?
• Are the customer complaining as to why this process is not being made easy as provided by another competitor?

The Tipping Point

Apart from the functional correctness, a tester now has to incorporate checks for operational excellence and customer experience. Test strategy has to be likewise changed to include these points. A lot of these considerations require deeper domain insight than what a tester usually has. In order to mitigate this shortcoming, many organizations employ business analysts who come with this kind of relevant knowledge to validate these aspects. As a tester it is crucial that we start immersing more in understanding the underlying domain of the business, and get more acclimatized to the organization and customer’s way of working. Organizations have to invest in ensuring testers are given deeper insights into the customer’s domain to keep the testers relevant and productive in the journey of digitalization.

I am sure many of you would have your own thoughts on how testers can contribute in the digitalization testing and would love to hear about them. Do comment below for the broader purpose of knowledge sharing.

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