You’ve heard the expression “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer;” this is solid advice when it comes to running your business. You have to keep a constant eye on your competition. Remaining competitive and keeping or maintaining your edge over them is only possible if you stay informed about how they’re evolving. How are they attracting their audience? Watch what they’re doing and learn from their mistakes without tripping over the same stumbling blocks. 

Ideally, both growth and profits should go hand in hand. If you find you’re sacrificing one for the other, it’s time to reevaluate your approach. Look into your finances and find where you can cut costs. Where are the majority of your expenses? Consider selling obsolete machinery or surplus inventory. If you’re in the medical industry, negotiate insurance contracts. Examine your credit terms. If changes can be made in any of these categories, you will save money and increase your cash flow. 

Grow Your Business 

To keep money coming in, consider making some changes to the way you’re currently conducting business. If you aren’t yet using social media to your advantage, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. Visibility not only promotes your business but gives you the opportunity to forge alliances that can save you money. With a business that offers a complimentary product or service, you can save money by partnering up with advertising efforts.

Find services or products you can offer your customers that complement your current business. Add-on products can help to boost your profits. For example, if you run a tanning salon, consider offering tanning products your customer can use when they come in to tan.

Be money savvy. Investigate what you can offer in terms of discounts with prepaid accounts or subscriptions. When it comes to your accounts payable, are you being wise with your money by making payments on time? If not, you can be wasting money on late fees and other monetary penalties. If you have customers that consistently pay late, consider tightening your terms of credit. Lower the amount of credit you extend to less-than-ideal customers and consider using a collection agency to recover monies owed. 

When it comes to your liquid money, don’t just use any checking account for your business deposits. Look into accounts that offer a higher interest rate for the bulk of your deposits. Be sure to meet minimum balance requirements in accounts that have lower interest rates, as financial institutions may charge you for falling below an established threshold. Keep the rest of your money in a higher-yielding account. You could also ask customers to pay directly into the higher interest-bearing accounts to be sure you’re earning that interest from day one. 

Examine Contracts 

When you have an agreed-upon contract with a customer, be sure you understand exactly what you’re offering. If for any reason you have to provide additional services or materials, make sure you pass those costs along to the customer to avoid losing money for the sake of doing business. 

On the same token, offer your customers discounts for paying off their balances earlier than expected. Incentives to save money can influence those who can pay more to do so in order to get the best deal. 

To keep your income high and costs low, be sure to examine your current practices and notice where you can make changes to save money and put those changes to work for you. 

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Improve Your Business Bottom Line appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

With more demand than ever for software solutions, developers across the world are facing both unprecedented profit potential and stress. Given the rate at which technology continues to change, deadlines and project time frames are shorter than ever. Apps and software solutions that take long periods of time to reach the market risk being obsolete by the time they launch.

As such, more pressure than ever is on the shoulders of developers and software companies to deliver fully functional solutions in short periods of time. Despite advancements in software development, one area still requires full and undivided attention: software testing.

Let’s examine the different types of software functional testing that developers use to ensure successful, functional products reach consumers.

What Is Functional Testing?

Strictly speaking, functional testing is used to determine whether software will perform as expected given its requirements and specifications. This relates to the most basic elements of software solutions, rather than aesthetic concerns or user experience.

Software testing services like Global App Testing provide an array of functional testing solutions that improve testing efficiency and speed for developers. In addition to these services, they also provide options for agile testing, exploratory testing, manual testing, and QA testing.

Integration Testing

One of the latter forms of functional testing, integration testing refers to ensuring all originally separate elements of software are functioning as intended after being integrated. This can refer to elements such as code modules but may also deal with various client and server applications as well.

Unit Testing

In contrast with integration testing, unit testing often begins early in the software development process. This is conducted on individual modules or elements, ensuring that their internal or stand-alone processes are performing as intended. This tends to be handled by programmers and will often involve both careful inspection and knowledge of the code used to create the unit(s).

System Testing

Generally following integration testing, the functional testing process known as system testing is where the final (or near-final) software solution itself is tested to ensure it is functioning as intended. Whereas integration testing often focuses on merely the software elements being integrated properly, system testing incorporates the use of hardware as well to verify that the software will operate under real-world parameters.

Regression Testing

There are undoubtedly hundreds or thousands of individual project tasks in each major software development project. Along the way, one form of testing – regression testing – helps verify that any changes made to the software itself have not caused functional problems throughout the project. Generally, regression testing may be performed after each major update within an assigned task group to verify that all programmers and developers are aware of any emerging software issues. Many forms of regression testing can be conducted via automated solutions, making the process one of the easier forms of functional testing.

Interface Testing

While developers and programmers generally rely on coding and programming experience to build software, end users need a functional, simple and (often) graphic interface in order to use it. This is why interface testing is another crucial part of the software testing process. Often known as Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing, this aspect verifies that design elements such as navigational elements, clickable assets, display fields and text are optimised for each operating system. This may involve customising key elements such as resolution and/or using responsive design, as well as ensuring consistent performance across one or more devices, operating systems and/or resolutions.

Beta Testing

Beta testing is often the first opportunity end-users receive to experiment with software, help find bugs and ultimately improve the software experience. Beta testing generally involves a preliminary release of software (which may be available for free or at cost) that permits developers to see how the software functions among a mass audience of customers who will ultimately use the fully-released product. This is a prime method through which software developers find otherwise unknown bugs and fix them prior to full release.

Sanity Testing

There is so much testing in the software development process, you sometimes need a test to see if it’s ready to test! Sanity testing is often the first major threshold where multiple units or elements will be tested in conjunction with each other as part of the eventual software package itself. Sanity testing involves assessing whether the project is currently functional enough to merit testing; if it is still loaded with bugs and crashing, for example, then it does not yet pass the sanity test.

Smoke Testing

Last but not least, no functional testing process would be complete without smoke testing. While it may seem very similar to sanity testing, there are key differences: learn about them here.

In smoke testing, teams verify that new builds or versions of software actually meet compatibility and functionality thresholds for deployment. If the team discovers that too many bugs or flaws exist with the build to deploy it, they will reject the deployment and sent it back to testing and development teams for further work.

Many don’t know just how much work goes into the process of testing and developing software. Nevertheless, these crucial components of functional testing help ensure very piece of quality software on the market works professionally, reliably and offers a great user experience.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post A Look at the Different Types of Software Testing appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

 

Leading web archiving and monitoring solutions provider MirrorWeb has been selected to join the Microsoft ScaleUp program, an exclusive initiative which grants a small number of high-growth companies access to Microsoft’s sales, marketing and technical support.

 By joining the program, MirrorWeb now has the opportunity to further upgrade its platform as growth accelerates. Microsoft’s distinguished technology expertise will ensure MirrorWeb’s unique website and social media archiving software remains secure, efficient and continues to deliver value for its clients in keeping with industry developments.

MirrorWeb expects participation to help boost its platform and accelerate growth. Microsoft’s expertise will ensure MirrorWeb’s services remains secure, efficient and while delivering value for its clients in keeping with industry developments.

Companies participating in the two-year program are mentored by industry experts and engage in go-to-market activities to scale their growth globally. Upon graduating, they are supported by a team of success managers, gaining access to a range of contacts as part of the Microsoft Partner and Microsoft ScaleUp Program Alumni networks.

To be successful in gaining entry onto the Microsoft ScaleUp program, companies must be startups or growth enterprises at the forefront of emerging technologies and with the potential to tap into newer markets. Fewer than 2% of applications to the program are currently successful.

Companies participating in the two-year program are mentored by numerous industry experts and engage in go-to-market activities to scale their growth globally. Upon graduating, they are supported by a dedicated team of success managers, gaining access to an invaluable range of contacts as part of the Microsoft Partner and Microsoft ScaleUp Program Alumni networks.

The Microsoft ScaleUp program has already led to success for many of its members. One noticeable success story is Beijing-headquartered Testin, a mobile QA company that has since raised $85m in follow on funding and now services over 800,000 developers.

MirrorWeb helps digital marketing and compliance professionals meet stringent regulation requirements by capturing immutable records of their digital content and archiving their web and social media channels. Clients included Liontrust Asset Management, Zurich Insurance Group, Tesco Bank, Bank of England and the Treasury.

David Clee, CEO and Co-founder of MirrorWeb stated: “We are delighted to have been selected to join the Microsoft ScaleUp program. Meeting Microsoft’s selection criteria places us amongst the world’s foremost high-growth technology enterprises and affirms that our innovative platform is ready to support a vast range of clients in their digital transformation. Our unique archiving software should be an invaluable part of any regulated business’s toolkit and, as one of the world’s most influential businesses, Microsoft’s partnership will be crucial to realising this.”

 Annie Parker, Global Head of Microsoft for Startups said that MirrorWeb has distinguished itself from other high-growth companies in the sector.

“Given that fewer than 2% of companies applying to our program are selected, MirrorWeb has distinguished itself from other high-growth companies in the sector. We are looking forward to working closely with MirrorWeb and supporting the company on an exciting path of continued, robust growth.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Mirrorweb Joins Microsoft’s ScaleUp Program appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.