How the Corecom Group shaped, enabled and grew the testing capabilities of a global financial services organisation

SITUATION

The client is the UK division of a global financing company who provide financial services to business and consumers.  Following a recent take-over, the client has reviewed the performance of its IT service providers and has decided to bring its testing service back in house.  This will allow them to adopt agile development techniques and significantly accelerate the time taken to get new products and services into the market. 

CHALLENGE 

Testing had been outsourced to an offshore partner for several years and this had achieved the initial cost savings required.  Despite this, the service provider did not introduce any innovation or new ways of working into the service and continued to work in a very reactive ‘waterfall’ manner.  The client operates in a very competitive market where the rapid introduction of new products is critical to securing new revenue streams and the testing and release life-cycle was introducing unnecessary delays. 

THE SOLUTION 

• SHAPE – CQE worked with the customer to define the target operating model including the organisational design and key roles. We took a holistic view of the project and took accountability for the performance of all three Corecom Group companies. CQE provided a transformation leader, supported by a team of specialist test consultants, capable of driving and executing and transformation programme of this nature. 
• ENABLE – Once the solution had been shaped, Corecom Consulting enabled the client to deliver on the plan by running branded, targeted, digital recruitment campaigns to find the permanent employees the client needed. The campaign included hiring permanent employees into the leadership team, including an experienced Head of Testing, as well as a team of Test Managers with strong industry experience. Corecom also provided cohorts of expert test contractors across Automation and Performance Engineering as well as Test Leads and Managers during project peaks. 
• GROW – To ensure this service became established and sustainable, our client needed to look to the medium and long term. This was achieved by hiring and developing their own people in addition to the specialists from CQE and the permanent recruitment of experienced hires via Corecom Consulting. This was where Corecom Technology Academy (CTA) came in. CTA recruited, trained and mentored a number of highly successful technology professionals made up of university graduates and ambitious career changers that were integrated into the client’s existing teams to sustainably grow their capability in the medium and long term.