Why Should an Organization Embrace Digital Assurance?

We have been hearing the term ‘Digital’ since ages. The concept is as old as when the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC), the first “automatic electronic digital computer” was invented in 1942. So when we talk ‘Digital’, some folks may tend to think that it’s just repackaging the same old concept in a new envelope. But they are wrong! It’s a bold new world out there which has brought a paradigm shift in the way we think, view and operate our lives and businesses.

To bring more context into what has changed, glaze through the following figures:

• Global IOT market is expected to touch $8.9 Trillion by 2020 (Source)
• Worldwide big data & analytics market is now more than $125 billion (Source)
• Google processes over 100 billion searches per month (Source)
• Worldwide Public Cloud Services market is expected to cross $100 billion (Source)
• There are more than 7 billion Mobile devices in the world (Source)
• Facebook has over 55 billion monthly active users (Source)

These figures clearly drive the point that we are living in the digital era and those who will embrace this unavoidable change will survive, else should be ready to face the inevitable. Most of us many times tend to confuse ‘Digital’ with Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce or Web & Content Management Systems. It is important to understand these are critical elements of the Digital Universe but its boundaries extend far beyond these domains.

The critical priority for most of the organizations now is how to adapt to this digital transformation wave and add new services while ensuring their core functionalities are not adversely impacted. This has led to the emergence of the concept of Digital Assurance.

So, what exactly is Digital Assurance?

Digital Assurance is a set of quality assurance practices to ensure smooth interactions between various components of Digital Ecosystems encompassing interconnected people, processes and things cutting across the Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud stack.
The Digital Assurance practices become critical for an organization considering complexities of the environment and the challenges which an organization faces in its journey to become a fully Digital Enterprise.

Top 5 factors driving an organization to embrace Digital Assurance initiatives as part of their DNA:

• Digital is Complex : The most difficult challenge comes from the complexities arising from the nexus of forces – Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud, to ensure that they work in synchronization with organizational goals.

• Digital makes an organization vulnerable to Security Threats : Security is of paramount importance specifically in an interconnected world. The smart interconnected ecosystems on one side enable an unimaginable world of possibilities, but it makes the entire system highly vulnerable to security threats, if not properly configured and tested, on the flip side.

• Digital needs to leverage your Legacy Infrastructure : This is again next important challenge specifically with those enterprises who are not born Digital. They need to change their organizational DNA both from a cultural perspective and from legacy IT infrastructure standpoint. Ensuring their core functionalities are not impacted as they chart their path towards Digital Infrastructure can be much challenging.

• Digital can make or break your Customer Experience : Delivering enhanced customer experience while leveraging a variety of components of Digital Ecosystem becomes challenging. Ensuring each component delivers optimum performance leading to customer delight becomes difficult as an organization becomes more digitally matured.

• Digital demands Agility : Being Agile through continuous quality assurance initiatives, and automating processes to ensure shorter delivery cycles become highly critical in a highly dynamic digital landscape.

It is important for any organization to not only adopt Digital Assurance practice, but also to choose a reliable service provider who can comprehensively address each dimension as captured above. A successful Digital Assurance initiative will help an organization achieve reduced time to market, better quality while ensuring scalability. In our next blog post on Digital Assurance, we will cover various testing services under Digital Assurance in detail.