Managed Testing Services

The client is a leading provider of voice and data communications services for both consumer and enterprise customers. It has presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and the United States. The company provides a wide range of mobile voice and data communications services to millions of subscribers world over. It offers mobile services over GSM, GPRS and W-CDMA 3G networks.

The three most critical challenges faced by the client were:

High costs

Inefficient utilization of test and development resources escalated costs. The costs further rose owing to inefficient infrastructure planning leading to sub-optimal utilization of test equipment. In addition, presence of multiple legacy systems and tools increased the operations and maintenance expenses.

Managing multiple vendors for niche testing

As the variety of terminals offered by MVNOs on the customer’s network increased, so did the number of vendors that needed to be managed for niche testing. As a result, the management overheads increased significantly. Limited resources, reduced re-use across tools and poor accountability significantly impacted project timelines and expenses.

Poor testing quality

Increased complexities because of unique test requirements, limited reuse of resources and inconsistencies in processes led to increase in defects reported by customers. These defects were very expensive to fix and also impacted overall customer satisfaction.

Aricent Solution

We worked closely with the client to set up a managed testing service center that provided consistent end-to-end testing for all new network capabilities and service launches. Aricent’s comprehensive solution included:

• Integrating test equipment from multiple vendors
• Defining the test strategy
• Test case development and execution
• Resolving defects
• Test reporting

We provided business process validation service, which included a non-technical and independent evaluation of the end-to-end business processes to ensure smooth service roll-outs. Aricent also established a comprehensive knowledge management system to enable metrics collection, analysis and automation. In addition, we also performed interoperability testing of all the 2G and 3G mobile devices. In order to provide a cost effective solution, Aricent set up an independent MVNO Device Testing Center in the UK to deliver superior value through a fixed price delivery model.

Results

Aricent enabled the customer to complete the vendor transition in just three months. With Aricent’s Managed Testing Services, the customer was able to reduce daily average cost of testing by 50% - this was achieved by efficiently leveraging Aricent’s global delivery model.