QualityKiosk: Bringing Enterprise Quality Assurance and Testing Expertise

Digital is no longer an option but a necessity today. Success in digital era requires enterprises to focus on high quality of products and services. As enterprises modernise and transform their legacy environment for the digital era, robust quality assurance is imperative. Innovative solutions and framework powered by big data analytics technologies, strong expertise in DevOps, Agile and lean technologies can help enterprises reimagine strategies and bring in a measurable impact. In an exclusive interaction with Analytics Insight, Maneesh Jhawar, Founder & CEO, QualityKiosk shares how the company's end-to-end digital and enterprise quality assurance solutions help organizations to be digital disruptors in their marketplace.

Analytics Insight: Kindly brief us about QualityKiosk, its specialization and services offered.

Maneesh: QualityKiosk's cohesive line of quality assurance services include functional assurance, performance assurance & engineering, test automation and real-time user experience management and monitoring. QualityKiosk's unique SaaS platform deploys services across the quality assurance lifecycle on a 24×7 basis to deliver a delightful end-user experience for mission-critical business applications. QualityKiosk's USP is our synthetic monitoring platform, CXGuardian – Customer Experience Guardian. The company offers unparalleled service and support in pre and post production of software testing; pre-production ­­– functional assurance, performance engineering and device testing and post-production – CXGuardian, synthetic monitoring, real user monitoring and device testing. We simulate and monitor customer journeys on real mobile devices. We are the only synthetic monitoring platform in the world that can navigate complex customer journeys including CAPTCHA, Mobile OTP and 2-Factor authentication.

Analytics Insight: With what mission was the company set up? Tell us about your journey since inception.

Maneesh: In the year 2000, I sensed a need-gap in the software testing scenario and started QualityKiosk with my IIT-Kanpur batchmate. It has been a journey of learning each day….

In earlier days, for a core banking or an insurance organization, the entire IT team's focus used to be one or two releases per year. Today, with digital applications and multiple channels, the core system, still crucial, is not the only important system. There are digital applications where incremental releases are done every day. Think about 2001 with 1 -2 releases per year.

Another way to look at this is from a customer's point of view. In 2001, communication was one-sided – brand to customer. Today it is a two-way interactive communication. In case the customer is not gratified at the time of his choice and across the channel, he chooses to engage with the brand, be prepared for a social media tantrum. Continuous monitoring is needed to continuously delight customers to avoid a frustrated or below par experience.

Last, but not the least, testing IoT, M2M, sensors and embedded technology opens up new realms in testing. 2018 is a good time to be in the business of Digital Business Assurance.

Analytics Insight: Please tell us more about yourself and your contributions towards the company and the industry.

Maneesh: I started my career with Procter and Gamble in 1990 where I assisted in setting up of the Toothpaste Manufacturing Facility for exports in record time. I helped set up the TQM (Total Quality Management) practice at P&G's flagship manufacturing facility before moving to my family business Maneesh Pipes Private Limited, an EPC company for large water supply schemes and piping solutions for all industries.

I am an investor and on the Advisory Board of three companies in Mobility, Data Analytics and e-Commerce space.

With a B. Tech from IIT Kanpur, I have completed a program on "Transforming Professional Services Companies" from Harvard Business School. I enjoy reading books and have a collection of 1000+ classics. I serve as the President of MPM Trust which runs one of the largest community centers in Navi Mumbai.

Analytics Insight: Tell us how QualityKiosk is contributing to the Big Data Analytics industry and how is it benefiting clients.

Maneesh: QualityKiosk provides Digital Business Assurance and our outcome-based solutions guarantee that the client's business goals are met. In the past 17 years, it has only increased in relevance with digitization taking center stage in all sectors and industries.

Analytics Insight: Kindly mention some of the major challenges QualityKiosk has faced till now.

Maneesh: We are mainly focussed on markets in Asia-Pacific, Japan and Middle-East with limited presence in the US and Europe. Our marketing efforts are just two years old and an area we haven't focussed on much in the past 18 years. We are actively trying to work on it.

Another challenge from a business point of view is the rapid evolution of the tools and technology landscape which keeps the entire organization on its toes and upskilling the entire team of 1500 people becomes a constant ongoing effort. This is exactly what keeps us going in the game. To have an edge over the competition, we have to be agile and open to reskilling our entire value chain.

Analytics Insight: How do you see QualityKiosk and the industry in the future ahead?

Maneesh: The market is evolving each day with Internet of Things, Smart Machines, Industrial IoT, and Machine to Machine Communication going mainstream as more people become digitally savvy for mundane chores, online payments, online shopping and even buying groceries. In such a scenario, even one failed transaction will lead to a frustrated end-user. With digitization already, the next best thing, quality assurance is an area organizations will have to focus on.

Our services cut across industry verticals – any business that uses IT systems, mobile applications and believes in delivering a stellar end user experience. Industries like Banking, Insurance, Retail & e-Commerce, Telecom and Automotive are in the midst of their digital transformation.

QualityKiosk's unique platforms for automation, performance engineering, continuous testing and continuous monitoring are future ready – in terms of delivering business value to our clients.

Analytics Insight: How are disruptive technologies like big data analytics/ AI/ Machine Learning impacting today's innovations?

Maneesh: New age disruptive technologies like big data analytics using machine learning and advanced algorithms are changing the way brands cater value to end customers. For example, if an end-customer is in a retail store or on an e-commerce website and decides to buy impulsively, then the brand has to cater to those digital-savvy customers in near real-time. AI, ML, Big data analytics helps brands understand consumer behavior better and deliver value across a channel of choice and across a delivery mechanism of choice.

On the operations side, big data analytics, machine learning makes business processes simpler, more scalable, robust and lot more efficiency is brought into the picture using technologies like cognitive RPA.

Analytics Insight: How is QualityKiosk helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company's technology innovations?

Maneesh: QualityKiosk helps customers guarantee digital business assurance for their end users via quality engineering. Our solution set is unique, it is on pre-production as well as on post-production encompassing not just the life cycle of an application but its entire lifespan; right from concept and design, understanding the requirement to the goal. Our promise to our customers is guaranteeing a seamless experience for their end users and a headache and heartache free quality assurance life cycle.

Analytics Insight: How does QualityKiosk's strategy facilitate the transformation of an enterprise?

Maneesh: There are two types of enterprises in today's digital era; organizations who are born native and organizations that are transforming. For organizations who are born native, QualityKiosk has bleeding edge tech solutions to cater to this class of enterprise customers. Majority of organizations in banking, insurance, telecommunication, retail and automotive are not born digital. These organizations have a lot of legacy systems. QualityKiosk's tools & technology platforms are geared to cater to the traditional waterfall model as well as new age agile and DevOps methodologies. Here, QualityKiosk partners with these organizations and walks them through their entire digital transformation journey.  

Analytics Insight: How is QualityKiosk utilizing advanced analytics and big data? Would you like to highlight a few use cases where analytics has benefitted the organization tremendously?

Maneesh: QualityKiosk uses bots to monitor every customer journey and in case of a lapse, we alert the relevant stakeholders – it could be the call center, the customer service team, the IT team or the vendor who is supporting the IT infrastructure.

For the marketing team of a retailer or a bank, there is a direct revenue loss, say in case of a NEFT transaction that does not go through seamlessly or a customer buying journey in the retail e-commerce buying scenario breaks.

Another key aspect is measuring in real-time; the entire health of the IT ecosystem including front-end API and interfaces.

Every business, including a large enterprise business with a lot of legacy behind them, there are multiple channels and a customer can come on any channel. All of these channels are integrated into the enterprise workhorse using APIs and interfaces. QualityKiosk guarantees the uptime of these interfaces and ensures that the customer will not suffer a bad experience.

Analytics Insight: What is QualityKiosk's business roadmap like for 2018?

Maneesh: We plan to grow 5X in the next 5 years. The key to achieving this growth will lie in automation and continuous testing as we believe growth in employee number is not the only indicator of an organization's growth.

Our automation first approach is a win-win for clients and for us. It will allow us to do more, with less – less total cost of quality, fewer resources, and less time.

Analytics Insight: What is your leadership mantra?

Maneesh: We are a learning organization. Whatever we do, wherever we do and whoever we do it for, we want to be the best. For all the markets that we are working in with enterprise-class customers, we provide them world-class solutions with the support of world-class quality assurance. We believe that every QKite should bring value in every engagement and every conversation that they have professionally.