What does your company do?
Ten10 is the UK’s leading software testing consultancy. The company was formed following the merger at the end of 2015 of two separate testing consultancies – The Test People (TTP) and Centre4 Testing – positioning us as the largest, fastest-growing privately-owned UK-based software testing company.
We enable our clients to leverage advancements in technology for competitive advantage. In practice, we do this by offering a full suite of testing services across a vast range of software platforms, architectures and deployment models. Software testing scenarios can vary from new websites and mobile applications through to the implementation of business applications, sometimes with a customisation layer on top of a standard platform or an integration layer on top of a number of standard components and data sources.
In terms of deployment, it may be on-premise, in the cloud or a hybrid model. Often this is new, cutting-edge web technology but regularly we see this needing to integrate with legacy back end systems running code which is sometimes 30 years old or more.
What is your USP?
First and foremost, it’s the flexibility we offer our clients. We provide a breadth of technical testing talent and expertise to complement our comprehensive portfolio of testing services, enabling us to meet individual clients’ bespoke needs. Our ability to flex and scale these bespoke offerings as desired through the duration of projects and beyond really sets us apart from the competition.
The software development landscape is changing faster than ever before. It’s important for us to stay ahead of the game so that we can continue to provide clients with a progress test approach with the best-fit tools and techniques. We are committed to ongoing investment in R&D, from making use of off-the-shelf tools where appropriate right through to the ability to custom-build a tool for a uniquely challenging test project.
We understand that our clients have to balance making technological leaps to stay ahead with taking risky innovative moves that could end in disaster
Miles Worne CEO
We also recognise that clients are increasingly demanding more advisory services from their testing partner. We are committed to attracting and developing the most talented people in the industry and through them, we provide our clients with a rigorous and creative approach to software testing. With over 20 years of combined experience as a merged organisation, we have built up significant sector-specific expertise in certain industries, including retail. This means we bring with us a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the retail sector as well as familiarity with the commonly used platforms and technologies.
For us, it’s all about collaboration – working holistically with our clients to understand their long terms objectives and product roadmap, allowing testing to be incorporated into software development lifecycle management.
How would you describe your business area’s vision?
We understand that our clients have to balance making technological leaps to stay ahead with taking risky innovative moves that could end in disaster. Because we have the expertise, the talent, the technology and the rigour to de-risk technological innovation, we give our clients the confidence to embrace digital transformation and progress further and faster than the competition.
Clients are looking for a technically-robust testing solution that is delivered in an integrated fashion. They want to be met by true subject matter experts and supported through agile resourcing models and excellent customer service. Ten10 is a specialist pure-play software testing consultancy. We differentiate ourselves from the UK competition with our flexible and scalable approach to testing.
Increasingly, our clients are looking to reduce the time-to-market for new products and applications, which can mean working towards a minimum viable product with subsequent phased rollouts, They are also pushing for faster deployment of new technologies and systems. We offer our clients a variety of delivery models, from a completely outsourced service, on or off-site managed services, or simply staff augmentation to complement an existing team.
With over 120 permanent testing consultants and the largest network of professional, UK-based testers, we have the ability to rapidly deliver a testing solution at the pace required by our clients. Further to that we are able and willing to flex the ongoing solution in-line with a project’s changing demands. We want to be seen as a nimble, scalable alternative to the more rigid offerings out there.
What are you doing currently in the ecommerce/multichannel market?
We provide a variety of testing solutions for our retail/ecommerce clients. Typically these are focused on functional and performance testing of retail business applications such as POS, till and merchandising systems, logistics and distribution management and back end ERP and CRM systems. We help our clients with the development of a comprehensive and effective test strategy, which often includes identifying opportunities to automate testing as well as helping clients transition from a traditional waterfall environment to an agile delivery model.
An example with one client related to their retail order processing system, which was having issues processing volumes of sales through to the logistics distribution centre. We created a flexible testing approach that could be adjusted to test performance for different scenarios, such as black Friday. From these test results we were able to tune the order processing system by 500%. These improvements resulted in a planned IT project being put on hold for several years, making a hugely significant saving on IT spend.
We are also involved in front end testing projects such as mobile compatibility testing. Using our mobile device lab, we test sites and applications across a range of devices, operating systems and browsers, taking into account specific device features and screen sizes. Accessibility testing of websites and apps is also becoming more of a focus for retailers as they start to recognise that universal access is not only best practice, but can also help to increase onsite conversions. We support clients that are looking to comply with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, ensuring ease-of-use by people with a range of abilities.
Who are your customers?
We enjoying working on a variety of testing challenges, applications and environments but in particular, have developed sector-specific expertise in the following areas:
- Retail and ecommerce
- Financial services
- Legal
- Public sector (including major Government departments)
- Professional services
- Gaming
In the retail sector, we work with a number of household names including Debenhams, Blacks Outdoors, ScrewFix, RS Components, Bonmarché, Dyson and Habitat.
What do you see as challenges in the coming year and what are you doing to meet those challenges?
We see mobile as a huge opportunity, with ecommerce traffic hovering around 50%. However, this also presents real challenges. In IRUK 500’s recent research in the Mobile and Cross-channel Dimension, it found that just 24% of the Top500 offer both an iOS and Android app.
Mobile development is continuously evolving, so testing is having to adapt to keep pace. It’s an exciting market to be in. The range of different devices and capabilities, as well as the rate of change of new devices entering the market, is incredible. You can have a £50 device or an £800 device both using the same operating system but the performance and screen resolution varies tremendously. Yet the app or mobile site is expected to functionally work and perform well across devices at both ends of the scale and everything else in-between.
The smartphone is just one part of it however. The network – both wifi and mobile – also needs to be taken into account, with loss of connection, failover, re-connection and resiliency the new normal in a mobile environment. Our clients don’t have to worry about these complexities as we have a mobile device lab where we can test against a range of devices, operating systems and browsers, and manage test schedules for new releases as they enter the market.
Other considerations include the development environments being used to create software and the variety of platforms which are used to deploy software – often using a combination of internal infrastructure through to public and hybrid clouds – which can lead to issues around test data and security.
With our experience and expertise, we are provide our clients with testing solutions which effectively balance risk management with efficient use of budget and resource.
Ten10 IN BRIEF
Date founded: 2004
Global reach: UK
Turnover: £30m
Customers: 220
Number of employees: 174
Contact details for more information: Tel: +44 (0) 203 697 1444
Email: contact@ten10.com
Web: www.ten10.com
