Asset tracking and management pose a tremendous challenge to organizations that deal with transportation of various equipment, supplies and material from one location to the other or over long distances. Losses, theft and damage to assets result in losses amounting to trillions of dollars for companies around the world.
Monitoring assets for their health and status by relaying telemetric information using IoT sensors is an effective method to prevent such mishaps and protect valuable assets during transport and while in storage. Asset tracking solution providers use IoT sensors and digital visibility software to solve this problem.
“The global market for fixed asset management software is forecast to grow from 3 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 to 5.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Fixed asset management software is used to streamline maintenance processes, extend the longevity of assets, and improve productivity”, according to a report from Statista.
A supply chain visibility platform was serving logistic firms through their solution for asset tracking but stopped short at the limitations in addressing challenges with their IoT capabilities and Software Quality Assurance (SQE) and IoT testing.
Asset management software development relies on rigorous testing procedures to ensure that the devices and applications function as expected. Quality software in asset tracking is difficult to come by since tests should cover a range of issues that go beyond normal testing scenarios.
Most platforms cannot change rapidly to changing user demands and calls for expansion with traditional testing with hardly any automation in place.
Read more: How Innominds Became the Strategic QE Partner for a Global Cloud Data Platform
The current test suite limits the client in the following ways:
Manual testing:
The client’s test suite relied on manual testing for the most part. Engineers spend a major chunk of their efforts on running routine tests as part of releases.
Quite naturally, this meant that releases would be delayed owing to the enormous amount of time wasted in performing well-established tests that could be automated.
Critical bug detection:
Falling along the same lines of lost hours in manual test executions, the QE team hardly focused on the major issues by using a bottom-up approach. The application struggled to maintain stability as new features were added.
Limited test cycles:
As the test engineers could only handle a certain number of tests at a time, the number of test cycles was reduced. This meant that new issues that cropped up were left unnoticed until the next major test phase.
The existing solution’s lack of test automation raised the following concerns in client services:
Service availability in remote areas:
Sensors could track equipment and supplies in known locations through land areas, but failed to provide the same coverage for transport by the ocean, air, and remote locations, and even underwater.
Status information and availability:
Missing or misplaced assets, damaged goods, and items getting delivered to the wrong addresses caused confusion among vendors and staff. There was limited access to valuable information, such as asset health and customer support.
There is very little information that is passed on through these systems about a particular asset. This restricts asset tracking visibility to vendors and purchasers. There are also limitations to guard the items being shipped to ensure their sustainability in various conditions and in cases of damages.
Delayed information exchange:
Most of the time, supply chain service providers spend large investments in point-to-point asset checks, monitoring staff, and maintenance and repairs. However, such information was often delayed or lost in translation.
Innominds offers a well-rounded test suite of diverse tests and automation
In the absence of efficient asset tracking technology and solution, tracking assets is a time-consuming and laborious task that demands additional investments in manual assistance. This is not ideal as it is not a fool-proof solution and prevents service to a wider user base. The client wanted to improve their asset tracking platform to track assets accurately over long distances, trace their status and read the information on a real-time basis.
Innominds joined hands with the client and tested the client application across cloud, mobile, API, and device which aids in capturing the issues before the functionality is delivered to the customer.
With the new testing solution, the QE saved 50 to 70% of manual effort in various tests for every software release to the customer. Critical use cases were automated through the use of modern scripts and test pipelines.
As a result, new baselines were established in website and application performances. IoT sensor movements could be simulated for tests which resulted in real-time capture of performance metrics.
The test automation also resulted in improving the overall correctness of telemetric data received from the sensors from time to time. The huge delays in information exchange were now reduced and the solution could even handle minute-by-minute updates to asset health and location.
Read more: How Cloud-based Testing Drives Digital Transformation
Establishing a new automated testing standard with Innominds QE
Our client’s supply chain visibility platform wanted to serve their customers with a quality solution that could manage assets by extending the services provided. It included testing for better location tracking, real-time data availability, telemetric data retrieval capabilities, and providing a 360-degree view on their asset condition all day, every day.
With the improved test and QE in place, they were able to do just that. The client was able to establish a new standard of testing through Innominds automated QE. Resultingly; we were able to help the client as
- Established an automation test lab that executed test cycles 24x7
- Automated the critical use cases
- Increased the test automation coverage
- Reduced the manual testing efforts by 80% for each software and hardware release
- Ensured that there were no glitches or critical errors in the product delivery
An end-to-end platform spanning the web-app, cloud and device helped to put a stop to the recurring issues in software development and release for this asset tracking solution provider.
Asset tracking software is a major driver for preventing losses through mishaps and increasing venues for better business. From the enormous success that asset tracking software brings to organizations that manage variable goods and items, its market has grown over the years. Primarily since the tracking software is replacing manual processes that were error-prone and lacked other forms of traceability, they are gaining popularity in every organization for every shipping/movement and transaction.
Join us for a live Fireside chat event – Automated Software Testing Reimagined-Part 1 - on 17th June 2021. This is the 4th edition of our series of talks covering industry topics related to our wide array of services.