Your In-House Test Solution Is Costing You More Than You Think

Do you have an in-house testing solution? Are you thinking of making one? We might sound a little biased but you should let an expert handle it – you’ve got much better things to do with your time.

Businesses often build in-house products because they think it will save them time and money. But the reality is quite the opposite. We’re keen on helping manufacturers make the most of their data, and to do that they need to have the time to look at it.

If you’re spending your time keeping your in-house solution going then you’re missing the point.

Essential Requirements Aren’t Easy

Let’s quickly start with a list of the things you need to make sure a test data solution has beyond the core testing capabilities.

• Query Handling
• Support Ticket Management
• Cross Operating System/Browser Compatibility
• Mobile Device Functionality
• Release Management
• Modern Security Features

Are these all things your IT team can handle? It’s unlikely, and in most cases expecting all of these things to be covered is going to end in disappointment. That list didn’t even include bug fixing – which if you’ve got a homemade solution spread over multiple sites, companies, and machines is likely to need it quite often.

If you do manage to build a solution that just about copes with what you’re doing now, can it scale? The added complexities of ensuring encryption for data traffic across sites is a challenge many businesses run into as they expand their testing operations.

Not What You Do

Ultimately, developing testing software isn’t your core function. You might have some great people in-house with technical know-how, but again, they aren’t specialists in developing testing solutions. Your business needs you to focus on the quality of your products – not on maintaining a patchwork testing solution that doesn’t quite fit. Even scarier, particularly in smaller businesses, if you do have a product owner and they leave, a lot of their knowledge is going to go with them.

You would never make Excel from scratch to avoid paying a license fee. So why would you develop and maintain your own test data software?

One thing we’ve seen over the years is that first-pass yield calculations are always wrong in homemade solutions. You can create brilliant visualization tools but the data those visuals are built on has to be right first.

Data for the sake of data is pointless. You need to take the data that testing software gives you and turn it into actionable insight. Once you have a clear path you can take the steps to follow it.

We’ve got nearly 80 years of time invested into the WATS solution. That means it’s been built on the back of expertise and experience in manufacturing testing environments and has been proven to work well throughout them. You should be using your resources to take the data from WATS and improve efficiencies, product quality, comparing suppliers – everything. Don’t settle for second best.

Want to build a better test environment? Ask WATS for help.

Relevant articles:

• Do you know your true first pass yield?
• Risks to Consider When Launching A New Product