Software Assurance: ASSURING A Higher Level of Technology Performance in the 'SMART WAY'





Software Assurance: ASSURING A Higher Level of Technology Performance in the 'SMART WAY' Date: Monday , August 24, 2015 According to eminent naturalist Charles Darwin, \'it is not the strongest of the species that survive, but the one most responsive to change\'. Reaffirming the credibility of this legendary theory is the intriguing success story of anew age multi million dollar global enterprise, Software Assurance LLC (SPA), which was bootstrapped by Ram Garg with meagre $340 in 2007. Kick-starting its operations as a software testing outsourcing company in a period when offshore software outsourcing companies had a bad rap (due to high rate of projects failure and unethical outsourcing), SPA has come a long way to emerge as a one-stop-shop. Their profound expertise covers the entire IT spectrum from web and mobile to wearable product development, while maintaining its edge on testing. Considering that SPA started its journey as a software testing service provider, quality is in its DNA to keep the company a notch above its rivals. SPA leverages Ram\'s extensive project management and outsourcing background to ensure that the project management processes are strong. Client expectation management is keyalong with certain approaches such as no single point of failure ensure SPA delivers high quality product every time. But do not mistake Ram for a one dimensional tech guru; the entrepreneur leverages his business development acumen to help develop succinct plans for new and existing companies. Besides serving PMI as a Board Member of Service and Outsourcing initiative, he also has been very active in Dallas Startup Communities. As a successful entrepreneur, Ram is associated with Tech Wildcatters, the sixth best accelerator in U.S. Ram has invested and been guiding early stage startups and new entrepreneurs with his visionary inputs on not only technical front but on business planning, product planning, and projects executions. Yes, he is actively involved in creating the new stars of tomorrow. SPA - Software Performance Assured Cost arbitrage has always been the trump card to win client\'s heart. And SPA knows the art well. The company not only utilized third party resources to bootstrap the company, but also to provide services to customers at low cost with sheer focus on delivery without being succumbed into infrastructure issues. When the man who knows the ins and outs of the outsourcing business pitched the SMEs in Dallas, they could clearly see the advantages in SPA\'s compelling customer-centric outsourcing model, right value proposition, value enhancing pricing models and uncompromising eye for quality. Ram did not just acquire customers but established technology partnerships. He pointed out typical challenges faced by his previous customers and steered the new clients throughout the decision making processes, helping them build impeccable roadmaps. Customers, seeing the value of a partnership with SPA, quickly became advocates. Realizing that these advocates were being pushed down in the priority line by third party providers, SPA setup its own center in New Delhi. However, the epic moment for SPA was defined in 2009 when development was integrated to its portfolio, as Ram noticed that providing specialized (short-term) testing services to numerous SMEs caused the front-end to churn fast. Consequently the company acquired larger projects, winning projects against the Congizants and Mphasis of Dallas and emerged triumphantly, owing to its prowess in adding tremendous value to customers with its innovative processes. Keeping with the spirit in tandem with the evolving technologies, SPA built extensive mobile software development and testing capabilities over the last three years to address the exploding market growth enabled by mobile users. Adding another feather to its cap, the company recently made a fierce foray into wearable product development. Today, SPA has grown into a renowned brand in Dallas with a whopping year-on-year growth that has carved its presence as one of the strongest players in its space by constantly adapting to technologies, delivering flawless products and building customer loyalty. End-to-End Services with Remarkable Perks With strong project management expertise, SPA covers entire PDLC process (from designing to launching the application) and ensures the applications are built based upon required quality measures. The company\'s high-end service allows its customers to get exposure to underlying issues and address them effectively, while the flexible engagement model ensures that SPA\'s offerings suit customer\'s business needs. Report matrix bulletins are shared with all clients to clarify them quickly about their project\'s health status. SPA\'s robust test automation framework and infrastructure allows quick ramp up and has the flexibility and scalability to efficiently address not only current, but future testing requirements. At SPA, mismatched expectations are nipped in the bud via well-defined process for designing SLAs, and customers can measure the service level attained. \"We have built an institution to help our customers not make mistakes, which some of our initial customers made. We act as a \'Trusted Advisor\' to clients, with expertise built while working with 50+ startups delivering 100+ projects, and 80+ smiling team members,\" remarks a proud Ram Garg, Founder & CEO, Software Assurance LLC. With interesting deals like \'Risk-Free POC\', SPA is building the trust and gaining more momentum in winning new client projects. SPA uses the \'Right Team Structure\' even for a small duration project and assign different team members who are experts in their respective fields even when they are working part time on a specific project. Resolving the Challenges in Mobility Skilled workforce for web & mobile app development and testing services with competitive cost is not easily available in the U.S., especially in Texas and more specifically in the DFW area. SPA is monetizing the umpteen of opportunities available in the yet-to-be-tapped mobility space with hard-earned prowess in addressing the key challenges faced by organizations while adapting mobility and cost-blended models. Over the past decade, SPA has gained expertise across the full spectrum of web, mobile, wearable and testing. This full-service IT capability is unique and not something many companies can brag about. The company\'s extensive QA testing capabilities coupled with Mobile Lab make a sound technology infrastructure. SPA offers its Mobile testing lab to clients at no charge, which is equipped with 50+ mobile smartphones absolutely free. Fostering a Texas Size Can-Do Attitude SPA hires go-getters who are willing to go extra miles to meet customers\' needs. The can-do attitude and project ownership of employees helps the company deliver much higher value to clients, a trait that is rare in large companies. SPA ensures that its people are exposed to multiple aspects of running a business and are involved in the decision making process, thus enabling them to attain at least twice the experience the other companies can offer. As the revenue of SPA is growing, naturally it offers more growth opportunities. While numerous perks including flexible work culture, group parties, project parties, birthday gift vouchers, advance salary benefits, loyalty program, movie tickets, lunch on weekends with comp off, dinner and travel reimbursements, and corporate discount at restaurants put a smile of job satisfaction on their faces, intense training & development and monthly Top Performers, High Five & Cash Awards keep them on their toes. Employees are also awarded upon their completion of five, 10 and 15 years with SPA. SPA foresees growing its company size to 300 percent by end of 2016. The company has been acquiring its business predominantly through word-of-mouth references and owns no sales team, while the small marketing team focus on branding rather than lead maturing. However, with its rapid growth in revenue and offerings, SPA is currently building a sales and marketing team.The company that aims to be a leading service provider globally is keen on staying ahead competitively and expense both on the technical and business front to gain customers in Texas and DFW area whilst building a world-class company in next five years on latest technologies. The company will launch IT Staff Augmentation and Training business in U.S. next year which already has a presence in India.SPA also intends to build new partnerships with major companies, and cater to their full IT spectrum.SPA is investing significant amount of time and monies in building products akin to smart watches and wearable jewelleries involving a mix of web, mobile and wearable technologies for itself as well as customers. SPA intends to build strong frameworks and services including consulting around these technologies to maintain its lead. \"We have recently started on Wearable Product Development initiatives and are going to launch a product in Q4 2015. We already have built product that involves wearable app as we intend to be a premium Wearable development company by next year,\" concludes Ram. Living his dream, it is certain that Ram will do everything possible to not vacate the podium and take SPA to newer heights. Panel: Key Management Ram Garg, Founder & CEO This serial entrepreneur, published author and international speaker has been interviewed on various Technology topics. He is associated with organizations like The Indus Entrepreneur, Project Management Institute, Tech Wildcatters, TeleManagement Forum and Metroplex Technology Business Council among others. Offices Headquartered in Dallas, SPA has an offshore delivery centre in NCR India with 100+ workstations, dedicated mobile development and testing labs with 50+ latest and most popular smartphones Offerings: As organizations nowadays expect software projects to be delivered on laptop, tablets and smartphones, SPA caters startups as well as large enterprises to this need with: Mobile App Development, Mobile App Testing Web Application Development, Software Testing, Test Automation, IT Consulting Wearable App Development Application migration, maintenance, independent testing and product engineering among others Verticals: With vast experience in hot trends such as m-Commerce, mobile payment, wearables and cloud platforms, SPA has served multiple Industries like Bank and Finance, Loan Management, Gaming & Entertainment, HR, Cloud & Datacenters, Oil & Gas and Healthcare among others. Technologies HTML5, CSS3, AngularJS, JavaScript/JQuery, Photo Shop iOS, Swift, Android, Ruby on Rails, Python, Parse, .NET, Java, PHP, PHP Frameworks, WordPress, Joomla Test Tools Web: QTP, Selenium, LoadUI, LoadRunner, JMeter, Mobile: Appium, Robotium, MonkeyTalk Case Study SPA helped an entertainment industry client after he had burnt his fingers with high rates and substandard results. SPA passed the POC test, identified and improved critical functionalities without any KT reverse engineer code, came up with sound release management strategy for major and minor releases and balanced onshore-offshore strategy to reduce overall cost to fraction. The client now possess 1,70,000 user-base with investment from 7Eleven and SPA did a successful \'National Launch\'. SPA is not only helping them with designing, development, testing, marketing but it is now their extended IT Team. Testimonial from the customer \"Thank you, Ram. You have done a tremendous job putting our team together the past several months, from development-to-design-to-marketing-to-testing team. We feel really confident in our team now.(I know that we will face road bumps as we move forward, but) we feel confident as our team has proven to work together to come up with solutions. Thanks again, Ram and to our SPA team.