There is considerable optimism about the impact of new technologies such as blockchain, metaverse and other Web 3.0 applications. However, companies continue to struggle with various facets of quality engineering and testing (QE&T), according to a new study.
Quality assurance is focused on ensuring that a product achieves and maintains a certain level of quality. While all companies and industries include at least some quality assurance processes between the creation of a product and its distribution to the consumer, Web 3.0 and Blockchain for quality assurance processes become even more important to increase consumer safety and trust. That’s because these technologies create a permanent record and can be referenced much more quickly and with greater security than traditional records in an emergency. Let’s say that during a public health emergency caused by contaminated food, it enables companies to better recall defective goods before the consumer is put at risk.
Based on these assumptions, the 14th edition of the World Quality Report 2022, published today by Capgemini, its brand Sogeti and UK IT firm Micro Focus, finds that organizations are increasingly looking to QE&T to support the implementation and success of new technologies such as blockchain and Web 3.0 and to meet associated business challenges in customer experience, time to market, security and costs.
Greater reliance on quality assurance
The report finds that awareness is increasing about how quality strategy can (quickly) offset various risks linked to the implementation of new technology – from pure testing to actual quality techniques. For example, 88% of respondents agreed that they were at medium to high risk of losing market share to a competitor, and 90% agreed that they face the risk of increased costs for rolling out new technology solutions without a QE&T strategy.
The survey also found that organizations report significant improvements by adopting agile development, with 64% of respondents citing on-time delivery as the biggest improvement, while others focus on reduced quality costs, closely followed by improved customer experience.
Challenges to overcome
But there are certain barriers they need to address. For example, while executives (89%) believe that robust data validation capabilities can improve decision-making, efficiency and improve the bottom line, only 20% of respondents have a fully implemented enterprise-wide test data delivery strategy . Many organizations have serious challenges in implementing an effective data validation strategy; 42% see implementing data validation as a time-consuming exercise, while 47% of respondents said that having multiple complex databases in itself acts as a challenge.
The survey also found that organizations continue to struggle to implement agile development across packaged applications and enterprise systems due to the complex practicalities involved in breaking down enterprise resource planning (ERP) workflows and end-to-end business practices into a simple lag.
The importance of cyber security strategies to counter the risk of cyber attacks also emerged in the research, as 96% of respondents believe they will face medium or high risk of cyber attacks without a quality strategy in place for new technologies, the study said.
