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Health/Life Sciences company

How a revolutionary cancer-treatment company accelerated their SaaS strategy with Tricentis qTest and Tricentis Vera

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time savings with paperless validation

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reduction in test execution time

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Company overview

As a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative therapeutics for cancer treatment, a leading health/life sciences company has been providing cutting-edge medical assistance for patients since its inception. With a suite of leading next-generation antibody-based technology platforms, the company is invested in delivering promising life-saving cancer treatments, recognized by its partnerships with several global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

After shifting to independent ownership after a tenure as a global Health Life Sciences (HLS) corporation subsidiary, the company’s IT team found the freedom to explore more agile strategies to power their pursuit of curing life-threatening cancers with an approach that enables quality software innovation at speed.

Balancing agile IT strategy with reliable performance

The Head of IT Quality and Compliance knew he had a singular opportunity to lead the curve for quality engineering in the biopharmaceutical industry. As ownership transitioned to his team, he recognized two significant opportunities to improve the speed and quality of software delivery: shifting testing left and replacing manual validation methods with an integrated, paperless approach.

“When I joined the team, a big priority for us was shifting from a data center heavy with legacy technologies to a more lightweight, SaaS-based approach,” he said.

With a directive from the CIO to evolve from legacy, on-premises software as much as possible, he knew the company needed to examine SaaS-based products with an emphasis on forward-facing agility. The company had formerly used Micro Focus ALM/Quality Center for test management, but after facing several issues with Quality Center’s SaaS-based platform, the Head of IT Quality and Compliance knew he needed to seek a more futureproof solution.

Deriving more value from less manual labor

With a self-reported “lean internal IT team,” he realized that a test management solution with minimal technical overhead and highly scalable processes was paramount. Having used Tricentis Vera previously in his career to achieve paperless validation and streamlined software delivery, he decided to reevaluate Vera along with Tricentis qTest for an integrated approach to test management and validation.

Tricentis qTest’s scalable SaaS architecture fit their vision of a SaaS operating model, and the built-in cost savings that came with the reduction in managing automated test scripts was another big value driver in his decision.

Already utilizing Jira as their agile planning tool, the next requirement to fulfill in their test management strategy was a robust Jira integration to enable fast feedback loops between developers and testers. With Tricentis qTest and Vera’s built-in Jira integration, the team realized they could streamline the normally tedious computer systems validation process with an approach tailored to Agile and DevOps workflows.

The team also uses Tricentis Vera for test execution validations, and since they manage all their test requirements in Jira, having that “single source of truth” in Tricentis qTest/Vera provides a vastly improved peace of mind.

Easing the computer systems validation (CSV) headache

The ability to embed triggers and controls to capture compliant electronic signatures through a single system of record that integrates with test management and agile planning tools was responsible for a 50% time savings after the team made the switch from paper-based validation.

“We moved back onto paper-based test script validation for a couple months while we looked for a new tool and it caused a lot of headaches for my team,” the Head of IT Quality and Compliance said. “We’re much happier now that we’ve moved to a more streamlined, efficient approach.”

Aside from improved team morale, the team also reports a significant boost in tool usage proficiency alongside a drastically more intuitive technical onboarding process thanks to the easy-to-use GUI that Tricentis qTest/Vera provides.

“My team can get ramped on the tool more quickly and with less room for error than our old test management tool,” he reports.

Future state of test and CSV at the company

According to the Head of IT Quality and Compliance, his team is still in its relative infancy as an HLS partner to major biopharmaceutical companies worldwide, and he expects the company to grow in leaps and bounds over the next few years. As the company scales, he anticipates leaning more heavily on Tricentis qTest and Vera’s automation capabilities to ensure smooth software delivery practices as their scope grows.

Given the company’s focus on maintaining a lightweight SaaS architecture, combined with their need for reliable, streamlined software delivery, the company foresees adopting additional Tricentis products to empower their company’s future growth in 2023 and beyond.

Results

  • Pre-approval time reduction: 75%
  • Dry run of test script time reduction: 81%
  • Execution of test script time reduction: 78%
  • Bug approvals time reduction: 67%
  • Post-approval of executed scripts time reduction: 83%