Client: Leading television and telecom service provider in the United States

Region: North America

Industry: Telecommunications/Media & Entertainment

Client Challenge: The company wanted to improve the overall efficiency of its video testing processes while continuing to ensure that customer enjoys the expected services.

Solution: The organization worked with Capgemini to set up the Video Lab, an offshore team dedicated to video testing processes that lowered costs, improved flexibility, and decreased the release cycle.

Benefits:

• 70% improvement in cost benefit
• 50% regression test case were optimized
• 200% cost savings
• Significant reduction in overall release cycle
• Higher volume of test coverage, higher ROI over a longer period, and better coverage across multiple devices

Delivering enhanced telecoms services

Part of providing telecoms and media services is assuring that customers are able to enjoy the experience for which they have paid. This was never more important than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when customers had limited options for entertainment outside of the home. In order to ensure that it continued to deliver exception services, a major television and telecom service provider in North America performed regular video and web testing. In performing this process using an onshore team, the organization had experienced integration testing challenges for different types of set-up boxes, devices, and services. In addition, the company wanted to reduce the costs associated with testing and the time required while addressing redundancies in the execution of test cases.

As part of its effort to address these challenges, the organization engaged with Capgemini, which provided substantial technical expertise as well as substantial experience relevant to both the industry and testing solutions. Together, the partners began to work together to identify a solution fit to the company’s needs.

Making testing more efficient

After a thorough review of the service provider’s processes and challenges, Capgemini recommended the creation of a dedicated offshore team that would manage the company’s testing services. Following an agreement between the partners, the organization and Capgemini then assembled the relevant talent and expertise to form the Video Lab, which was set up to cover end-to-end testing for all set-up boxes, mobile devices, and web connections. The team was provided with a dedicated ethernet and wi-fi connection along with an open network, all of which further enabled its testing capabilities.

Once the Video Lab began to operate and manage testing processes, it used predictive analytics of previously executed tests and defect data in order to optimize the regression test suite. In addition, the partners implemented distributed ownership between the company and the Video Lab, resulting in a collaborative environment that played a key role in driving down the associated quality assurance (QA) costs. This combined effort also led to the unified reporting of testing execution and risk, all of which was provided to key stakeholders. Finally, the Video Lab applied component-based test automation framework with built-in wrapper functions to support applications from a variety of technology stacks, thereby improving the flexibility of the testing processes.

A future of enhanced services

The creation and launch of the Video Lab led to more efficient testing, both in terms of time and the related costs. With the offshore team in place, the service provider and Capgemini managed to improve the cost benefit of testing by 70% while 50% of regression test cases were optimized. Automation played a key role in delivering 200% costs savings while the overall release cycle was substantially reduced. In addition, the Video Lab enabled the organization to provide better coverage across various devices and services, while the partners also achieved a higher test coverage volume and a better return on investment over a longer period. Finally, the project enabled the company to increase the capacity of its release delivery, leading to a reduced time to market, while the open network unlocked the ability to concurrently test different devices and set up box validations.

Together, the service provider and Capgemini have improved the potency of video testing while lowering costs and expanding flexibility. Together, the partners will continue to look for opportunities to innovate and ensure that customers can rely on media and telecoms services.