Why Does It Pay to Outsource Quality Assurance Services?

Quality assurance is a critical phase in the software development lifecycle to ultimately secure the best possible product for customers. Despite the fact that there are some undeniable benefits when handling quality assurance in-house, delegating the QA activities to an outsourcing vendor may be a smart move for a lot of companies, particularly those that are not large enough to have adequate resources for an internal QA team. Even large-scale companies with an IT department in place grapple with their in-house team sometimes. As a result, another path has been opened for businesses to ask for a helping hand from outside – outsourcing quality assurance services.

What Is the Concept of Outsourcing Quality Assurance Services?

Briefly, quality assurance testing basically involves the evaluation of a software product or application to determine if it meets or exceeds the required quality standards. QA testing is an essential component in any development process as it can identify errors, bugs, and glitches that could potentially impact the functionality of the final product. In order to be effective, QA testing needs to be carried out throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) – from the initial requirements gathering stage all the way through to post-deployment. A high-quality software product must successfully pass through numerous forms of QA testing, including functional testing, automation testing, mobile testing, DevOps QA testing, localization testing, API testing, UX, and usability testing, before reaching the hands of the end users.

At its core, outsourcing quality assurance simply means contracting with a third party vendor for a testing team to handle all or some of the QA activities, ranging from early functional testing during the requirements gathering stage to final regression testing prior to release. Quality assurance testing services can be done on a project-by-project basis, or you can use an outsourced QA provider on an ongoing basis to supplement your in-house QA team. In particular, companies have various outsourcing business models of your choice, contracting out a dedicated team of QA testers to work independently on your long-term project, or they can augment QA engineers to collaborate shortly with their internal QA team on a one-time or short-term project. Usually, the outsourcing models are necessarily flexible to suit most companies.

The Critical Reasons to Outsource Quality Assurance

Business leaders always have their own good reasons to employ QA testing services from a third-party vendor. And in various contexts, a company takes the outsourcing strategy to reap a wide array of benefits to ultimately ensure the development and deployment of a high-quality software product. Let’s outline all the main benefits of outsourcing quality assurance services that led to that decision.

Access to Expertise

Imagine how troublesome and costly it might be to set up an in-house QA team of full positions. But let’s compare it with another scenario in which you outsource quality assurance and gain immediate access to the expertise you need and the world-class pool of testing professionals.

It is natural that an internal team is not always fully competent with certain expertise, skills, and experience, particularly for the newly formed one. It would cost to train them up to speed with your project requirements and the domain knowledge to hit the ground running. Perhaps, you have more control over your QA team if you were to build it internally; however, there is no guarantee that it is the right team when you put it into action.

Meanwhile, outsourcing quality assurance services allows you to choose and tailor your dream team without moving your fingers, which is the best thing about outsourcing. The QA companies will take care of your requirements and assemble a group of adepts accordingly within your predefined budgets, and they are accountable for the team’s performance and results. These service providers are well-versed in the local IT labor market, and they can find and hire the right specialists faster than you. Moreover, they will handle the operational tasks, ranging from sourcing to onboarding the right talent and more.

One more thing about contracting out the QA team is that you are not restricted to the local talent pool but can collaborate with experts from nearly all parts of the world. This is an opportune solution to cope with the current shortage of tech talent worldwide since most of the QA testing roles are project-specific and locating them is a nerve-wracking mission to accomplish.

Lower Costs

Outsourcing quality assurance services give you the ability to effectively manage and control costs as it is more predictable than maintaining an in-house QA team. It helps you avoid overhead costs such as employee benefits, training, office space, equipment, and software licenses. Also, most outsourcing providers offer you a flexible engagement model that enables you to pay only for the services you use without any long-term commitment.

Moreover, you can easily scale up or down the team up to the project progress or business situation. As a result, there will be no cost burden to run a QA team while you have no tasks for them, so you can save money and resources for more value-added investments.

Furthermore, outsourcing gives businesses the privilege to leverage the cost disparity between one country and another to acquire top talent at a fraction of the cost. In particular, a lot of IT companies from developed countries like Japan, Canada, Korea, America, etc., entrust their projects to offshore destinations, such as outsourcing to Vietnam, China, or India.

In addition to cost advantage, hiring QA testing services enable companies to take advantage of the difference in time zones so that they have their software products verified even when they are asleep. This is also the reason why business owners outsource software development to offshore locations to wrap up and bring their products to the market faster.

Faster & More Accurate Results

Let’s break this into two points – Faster and better.

When developers verify their own work, they are more likely to miss or overlook potential issues as they are familiar with the code and how it is written. On the contrary, an outsourced testing team will come in and act as end-users. With an objective viewpoint and no bias toward the product, they are able to detect errors at an early stage of development and provide more accurate results. Since QA outsourcing frees your development team from time-consuming tasks regarding QA and software testing, instead, they can spend maximum time and effort on developing the product and prioritize their internal resources on more value-added tasks. As a result, you can shorten the time-to-market of your software products while securing their highest level of quality.

Client Satisfaction

Remember that you have clients to serve. And in order to deliver the best customer experience and meet the users’ expectations, your products need to function properly, be up-to-date with the latest trends, and be free of defects or errors. All these criteria can only be met when you have an effective quality assurance plan as well as a qualified team in place. Outsourcing QA services is a solution that helps you build a high-performing testing team and ensure client satisfaction in the long term.

Inherit the Ready-made Best Practices

Partnering up with the right partner, you can instantly enjoy the mature QA processes that have been refined and completed over time without going through experimentation. It means there will be no need to start from scratch, as your provider will have a team of experienced QA engineers and testers with the latest testing tools and techniques to get your job done. Also, they will be well-versed in various development models and can adapt to your company’s specific needs and processes. As a result, you can avoid risks and achieve successful results in a shorter time frame.

Now that you know what to expect when outsourcing quality assurance services, what you would like to do next is to track down a reliable and capable partner who can offer you the full collection of advantages mentioned above and accompany you with your projects. Why search elsewhere when you get Orient Software right at your side? Why Orient Software? We have diverse expertise, more than a decade of experience, a vast pool of top tech talent and IT experts, and more, ready to serve your niche requirements and exceed your expectations. Contact us now for a free consultation.