IT Services

Beta Systems Software AG

Outsourcing benefits from standardisation

Background
Beta Systems Software AG develops high-quality software products and solutions for automated processing of large quantities of data and numbers of documents. The products and solutions serve to optimise processes, lead to improved security and ensure greater IT agility. They guarantee the fulfilment of business requirements with regard to governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) and enhance the performance of corporate IT in terms of availability, scalability and flexibility.

Beta Systems was founded in 1983, has been stock market listed since 1997 and employs over 600 staff. Its head office is in Berlin. Beta Systems has competence centres in Augsburg, Cologne and Calgary as well as 19 group companies of its own and a large num-ber of partner companies internationally. Around the world more than 1,400 clients use products and solutions from Beta Systems in over 3,300 active installations. Beta Systems generates around 50% of its sales internationally, with about 200 of its clients in the United States and Canada.


The Challenge
Beta Systems renews and updates its software solutions con-stantly. The software development and maintenance that this requires is distributed across several locations because the com-pany is structured decentrally. In the past, this has led to a partially non-uniform approach even within one location. While one group documented its test cases in Word, for example, the other main-tained its error lists in Excel. Beta Systems was therefore looking for a new testing procedure that ensures uniformity and transpar-ency and reduces the cost of testing. In the process the company also wanted to incorporate an outsourcing partner in Romania.

The Solution
In cooperation with SQS Software Quality Systems, Beta Systems set up a central, largely automated testing environment. The com-pany transferred all data that was relevant to software testing along with the testing archive to a specially designed, virtually available testing server that is hosted by its Augsburg computing centre. De-velopment teams and authorised testing officers in Germany and Romania access this testing system directly, and monitoring of indi-vidual test cases can now also be undertaken centrally. With the aid of the SQS-TEST®/Professional testing solution, Beta Systems automated fundamental testing tasks and processes and also integrated other testing tools that were already in use in the company, such as QuickTest Professional.


The Benefits

  • Testing runs are now less complex and achieve higher-quality results.
  • Testing data, processes and results are available centrally and across country and team borders.
  • From the project manager to the operational tester, everyone concerned has transparency about the current status, thereby making end-to-end monitoring possible.
  • Distribution of testing tasks is undertaken swiftly and without any problems via a protected VPN connection.
  • Testing inventories are consistent.
  • Fully automated batch programs can now be executed.