Factors spurring testing outsourcing

Analysts say the global testing services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 5% from 2012 to 2016, starting from a base of around 9 billion US dollars. This market growth is driven by lower costs and quicker time-to-market because of the increased use of software testing outsourcing. Software testing constitutes the bulk of the testing outsourcing market because software itself is used by businesses everywhere for both internal and external, customer-facing processes. The shortage of skilled software testers, and the difficulty and expense of maintaining them in-house – even in larger companies – has brought about more and more testing outsourcing to offshore countries such as India and the Philippines.

Just as the Philippines is catching up to India in providing the larger category of business process outsourcing services, the Philippines is now second to India in testing outsourcing. Even if cloud-based testing services are increasingly being adopted, a skilled and appropriately trained workforce is needed to execute these testing services. Moreover, testing requires large investments in training, tools, technology and talent recruitment.

Software testing outsourcing entails rooting out functional faults in software through processes such as test scripting, data creation and execution. Only after the product has been put through many trials is it then launched. Huge costs are saved when software is thoroughly tested because software failure can cripple companies such as banks where mission-critical software is required.

Software testing is essential to the software development process. Outsourcing ensures independent validation and assessment, and brings other benefits such as better software quality and lower infrastructure investment. Within the testing outsourcing continuum are steps such as strategy, planning, execution, and closure for the entire process. Then there is one-off testing on load, stress and performance, and beta user acceptance training or UAT. Software is tested for a range of characteristics such as quality, accuracy, security, capacity and completeness.

Since software will continue to be important in global business operations, software testing outsourcing will likewise remain important. Benefits from software testing outsourcing such as better quality, lower costs, a shorter development cycle leading to reduced time to market will keep this BPO segment growing in the next five years.