For banks, the mobile channel has the potential to provide far more contextual, personalised services, and the opportunity to rapidly scale the distribution of financial services into remote areas, at far lower costs than traditional branch-based banking footprints.
But actually, developing mobile solutions is often fraught with complexities. The problems they often encounter relate to the diverse nature of the mobile landscape. Consumers use all sorts of tablets, smartphones, phablets, smartwatches and other wearables. They’re running different versions of various mobile operating systems - from Android, to iOS, to Windows and even some lesser-known platforms. And they’re accessing these apps from a multitude of connections - from wobbly Edge and even GPRS, to lightning-quick LTE or fibre networks.
All of this complexity creates challenges for the developers of the bank’s mobile offerings. They should be spending their time designing and building the latest banking products, or integrating the newest fintech services to create revolutionary new customer experiences. But all too often they are dragged down, their energy consumed by solving technical issues for these various form-factors and operating systems.
Our wealth of experience in working with banks, both locally in South Africa as well as across the world, has revealed a surprising finding: The market-leading, faster-moving banks are employing new disciplines of software testing that help to radically accelerate the delivery of new digital services.
These banks, insurers and wealth providers are using modern testing approaches to become faster at delivering market-leading software, and thus claiming an important advantage in the battle for mobile dominance:
Many South African firms are demonstrating excellent standards of IT transformation in general and mobile app development in particular. Our vision is to play a key role in further developing local skills across the continent, enabling African companies to accelerate their forays into new digital technologies.
Testing methodologies may not seem like an area of competitive advantage, but - if structured well - your testing practice could well become a lynchpin that drives rapid digital transformation.