Introducing our 2021 Tricentis Customer Innovation Award winners

Throughout the year, we have the privilege of speaking candidly with many of our customers. While every customer’s transformational journey differs in approach, tooling needs, processes, and so on — there’s a consistent theme within each conversation. Simply put, our customers are leaders who wholeheartedly believe in their teams, the capabilities of each team member, and that an environment of collaboration is the main ingredient for success. They don’t want to be good; they want to be great.

Each year, Tricentis recognizes innovative organizations who are leading the charge in continuous testing. Reflecting on discussions with this year’s award winners, it’s no coincidence that they echo similar sentiments. Although award nominations can be submitted on behalf of a Tricentis customer, the most insightful submissions come directly from our customers.

Whether they’re leveraging our tools to streamline end-to-end load testing for SAP, accelerate cloud migrations, or prepare for online holiday shopping peaks, hearing customer success stories firsthand is no doubt extremely encouraging. This is the essence of what our Customer Innovation Awards are all about.

Innovator Award: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)

Tammie Davis, Director, Global Quality Engineering

IGH transformed its business processes through innovative automation framework applications that drive efficiency, quality, and an exceptional customer experience.

With a goal to optimize test automation across the enterprise, Tammie Davis knew that this achievement would come down to three major components: people, processes, and tools. In a recent conversation, Tammie outlined specifically what those success factors were. Aside from having a vision that everyone supported, establishing a strong partnership between Tricentis, and her Quality Engineering, Test Management Tool, and Test Tool Infrastructure teams was key. With proper planning, prioritization, and cross-team collaboration, IHG was able to establish a full end-to-end testing solution — despite added challenges brought forth by the pandemic.

How IHG’s test management transformation opened the door to Continuous Test Automation

“All in all it truly took a village, and we are so glad we’re here.” — Tammie Davis, IHG, on what made this year’s achievements possible

Transformation Award: Coles Supermarkets

Sai Nidumolu, Sr. Platform Test Manager

Coles Supermarkets drove incredible digital transformation within its organization by implementing and/or optimizing a modern continuous testing model.

To keep up with a fast-paced and ever-evolving retail market, Coles, one of Australia’s largest retailers, wanted to adopt a more Agile approach when it came to deploying changes to one of their business critical applications — specifically a tool used for managing daily store operations. As a solution, Sai Nidumolu and her team implemented Tricentis Tosca for test automation while embracing a DevOps approach. This resulted in their ability to deliver both functional tests and business value quickly and effectively, without compromising quality. None of which would be possible without “great team collaboration, passion, and drive.”

“In today’s digital world, transformation underpins business agility and scalability.” — Sai Nidumolu, Coles Supermarkets

Trailblazer Award: Twinformatics (part of the Vienna Insurance Group)

Wolfgang Gaida, Test Manager

Twinformatics expanded continuous testing approach into non-functional testing to further accelerate development cycles and release with greater confidence.

Confidence, as it relates to software development, is not a nice to have, it’s a must. Organizations need to be confident in the quality of software they release. This was just one of the requirements that Twinformatics’ Wolfgang Gaida had when seeking out a new solution to meet their performance testing needs. He wanted to be sure that they could do more performance testing with less manual effort, while maintaining the level of quality required. Wolfgang also knew that a user-friendly, low-maintenance solution like Tricentis NeoLoad would not only improve collaboration but be quickly embraced by key internal teams, while its reporting capabilities would be highly regarded by management.

Mover Award: Guardian Life

Robina Laughlin, 2nd Vice President, IT Quality Management, Enterprise Software Quality Assurance Team

Guardian Life is a best-case success story of switching from another platform to Tricentis.

When tasked with an AWS cloud migration of 200+ applications over the span of one year, Robina Laughlin quickly understood the challenges an undertaking like this would yield. Early on and throughout this initiative, she recalled Guardian’s three guiding principles — principles that a company serving 29M customers daily must fully embody to remain both competitive and successful — “people count, we do the right thing, and we hold ourselves to truly high standards.”

Robina chose Tricentis qTest on the basis that her team needed a solution built for modern application delivery, would integrate well with existing tools, and was flexible enough to adapt as the team’s needs evolved. Guardian’s guiding principles not only make up the foundation of their commitment to customers, but serve as a guiding light when seeking solutions for optimizing internal QA processes.

How Guardian transformed their QA to streamline AWS + API migration

“There are three guiding principles for what we do to put our clients first in everything — people count, we do the right thing, and we hold ourselves to truly high standards.” — Robina Laughlin, Guardian

Globetrotter Award: Molson Coors Beverage Company

Maribeth Achterberg, VP, IT Solution Delivery
Nick Data, Sr. Manager of IT Quality Assurance

Coors demonstrated the best global rollout of a Tricentis tool.

After having successfully automated multiple workflows spanning several web and desktop applications such as Salesforce, SAP, DocuSign, Conga, and Drupal, we asked Nick Data to share what he felt most contributed to Molson Coors’ success as it pertains to their automation journey over the past year. In his own words, “I think it was the collaboration. Among all the different teams — my own IT QA team, along with our project delivery teams, as well as Tricentis. We all partnered together to make sure that we had Tosca properly placed within the infrastructure that we had planned out for it, but also that we were successful in learning and utilizing Tosca. Additionally, many hours of mentoring, coaching, and various collaborative sessions all contributed to our success this year.”

Champion Award: T-Mobile

The Software Quality and Release Team

T-Mobile exemplified continuous testing innovation and excellence, having achieved unparalleled overall business success by leveraging Tricentis as a true transformation partner.

When we hear the word “champion,” visuals of trophies, medals, and athletes come to mind — things that symbolize excellence. Champions are also advocates, wholeheartedly supporting the causes and the people they believe in. This spirit was shared across T-Mobile’s Software Quality and Release (SQaR) team throughout their Tool Simplification initiative. While the idea of simplification sounds easy in theory, there are many different factors to consider when it comes to streamlining all functions within a testing organization. T-Mobile utilized Tosca for automation and qTest for test case management, but most important, they built a framework that adequately supported their testing teams, ensuring a successful outcome.

“What made all of this successful were the people within the SQaR organization, acceptance and adoption of the tool set, the way we do our work, how we do our work, and the partners that we leverage.” — Aaron Haehn, T-Mobile

Summary

Our award winners were honored in a special keynote presentation by Tricentis founder Wolfgang Platz,at the Tricentis Virtual Summit.

A huge congratulations to each of our amazing customers who continue to push the boundaries of test innovation and software quality at their organizations. We look forward to celebrating more of our customers and their achievements over the next year.