GroupM Transforms Quality Assurance using BrowserStack

The shift to test automation brings better decisions, lower risk and rapid delivery.

SAN FRANCISCO — June 18, 2019 — BrowserStack, the most reliable mobile app and web testing platform, helped GroupM fulfill a high-stakes deadline in under four weeks. GroupM had to release a compliance website for the public in response to a new local regulation. Adding BrowserStack Automate to their testing stack not only gave GroupM the assurance of regulatory compliance but also set into motion a key organizational shift to quality engineering.

Today’s hyper-competitive market requires agility and speed. Customers expect fast delivery, seamless experiences and constant innovation. To achieve this, companies are evolving how they build, test and deploy software. They are adopting popular methodologies, like Agile and DevOps, in combination with automation tools to reduce release times and scale quality.

For GroupM – part of WPP and the world’s largest media investment company – this shift came at the onset of a compliance law, impacting the entire industry. The challenge was twofold: deliver on time and absolutely free of bugs, or risk noncompliance, which would expose the company to public scrutiny, if not also millions in fines. Adtech players typically have to stay on top of changing local regulations in every country they operate. New laws can mean updating systems, software, policies and products to remain compliant, and GroupM had to do it all on a tight timeline.

With four weeks to the compliance deadline, GroupM had made the required changes and developed the compliance website, but the challenge remained in testing it for a broad audience. There were too many scenarios to test and too little time.

“With our existing internal setup, it was difficult to deliver on time. We would’ve had to manually configure every browser, platform and geolocation setting, which is a big hassle,” says Moshiur Khondokar, Director of Global Engineering, QA at GroupM. “There was no room for error. A minor bug could flag noncompliance and potentially expose the company to millions — if not billions — in fines.”

GroupM CTO Bob Hammond recognized the need to scale their testing infrastructure, which is why they turned to BrowserStack. It gave Khondokar and his team the out-of-box solution they needed for running automated tests concurrently in every browser, platform and location.

Today, GroupM’s release pipeline has the speed and predictability it needs to thrive in an evolving, fast-paced market. Khondokar cites an example: “Our functional regression tests used to take 160+ hours for four QA engineers. With BrowserStack Automate, our builds run in just one hour. If we find issues, we talk about the risks and make a decision.”

BrowserStack helped GroupM not only release a bug-free website on time, but also kickstart a cultural shift from manual quality assurance to quality engineering. Khondokar says, “We want to get to a point where complete test automation takes a few minutes, where we can make instant decisions and implement continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and thereby delivering quality software products.”

About BrowserStack
BrowserStack is the most reliable web and mobile app testing platform on the market today. Founded by developers, for developers, BrowserStack allows users to quickly and easily test their mobile and web applications across thousands of devices and desktop browsers in order to ensure their software meets and exceeds organizational and customer expectations. More than 25,000 customers around the globe rely on BrowserStack. Founded in 2011, BrowserStack’s North American headquarters are located in San Francisco. The privately held company is backed by Accel.

For more information visit https://www.browserstack.com.

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