Firms spend a substantial portion of their QA budget on external consultants, yet 68% have no process for benchmarking their RoI from these relationships, states new research from QA Vector®. Of those that do, 27% say they hold only informal reviews and 23% use non-standardised internal reviews – so the vast majority have no structured review process.
Focusing on 10 consultants and systems integrators, the report analyses a number of impact metrics, including customer service, expertise, expectations, recommendations, time to onboard and acceleration of the software development process. As a result, Sapient, Accenture, IBM and Infosys have emerged with “High-impact” ratings, while HPE, following the sell off of one advisory division and of HP’s testing and software development products to Micro Focus in 2016, has also received strong ratings.
Given the long-term nature of contracts with consultants and systems integrators, it is essential they have a clear understanding of the regulatory framework. However, delivering on this vital priority is often undermined by inefficient internal structural and organisational processes. The complexity of IT legacy and infrastructure systems, the multiplicity of legacy coding languages, along with siloed ownership of applications and testing, are often viewed by specialists as the foremost obstacles.
“Financial firms are highly dependent on their chosen consulting and systems integration partners to ensure the success of their software QA processes,” says Justyn Trenner, who heads up QA Vector® Research as a director of QA Financial. “This report shows those relationships are in good shape but there is a lack of systematic tracking and evaluation of either the processes or the partners they use. We believe this report makes an important contribution in addressing this.”
Click here to read the full evaluation.
