Applause, the global leader in testing, feedback and research for digital experiences, announced that it is working with the leading mobile commerce accelerator Upstream to ensure valuable and user-friendly mobile experiences for consumers in emerging markets. Upstream leverages the Applause global community of more than 250,000 professional software testers to ensure high-quality, accurately-localized content is delivered by its customers to their consumers.
Founded in 2001, Upstream bridges the gap between content providers and consumers through its leading mobile commerce platform. The company helps mobile operators, service providers, developers and publishers capture the digital opportunity in developing markets across Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Upstream offers services that are localized, affordable, and easily accessible, regardless of network/device capabilities. Through these efforts, consumers are able to access content like mobile infotainment, stores/portals, education services, health services and micro-insurance services through SMS text, mobile web and mobile apps.
With solutions in place across more than 40 countries, Upstream’s growth has extended its reach, and led to requirements for testing under real-world conditions, not in a lab environment. Extreme variances in network connectivity and the numbers of different devices, carriers and operating systems presented challenges for in-house replication. To ensure that the end user experiences were up to the level of quality Upstream is known for, the company looked to Applause.
“A large part of our value is to make sure the end users’ experience is flawless,” said Massimo del Vecchio, chief technology officer for Upstream. “Applause was the only vendor who could provide the breadth of testing coverage we needed across geographies, technologies, and business scenarios to ensure that high level of quality.”
With local testers throughout South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, Vietnam and the Philippines, an Applause Project Manager leads teams of testers in each location through both functional exploratory testing and test case execution on every single one of the digital properties on which operators rely on Upstream to deliver quality experiences.
“Upstream does amazing work and has incredible global reach, across over 40 high-growth markets,” said Mark Holland, vice president of delivery for Applause. “For a company with their scope and their reputation for excellence, our testers are responsible for ensuring the quality of their services are consistent with the perception of their brand. We thrive in situations like that and the results speak for themselves.”
Upstream has been able to perform quality assurance of services across more than 500 unique device/OS/carrier combinations with real people testing in all of the countries in which Upstream operates. Upstream runs upwards of 10-15 exploratory and test case driven test cycles each month through Applause, sometimes running dozens of test cycles in a single month to cover its various digital properties across the globe. The companies are continuing to help increase the value of Upstream to its current and potential content delivery partners worldwide.
“Applause has sped up the process of reviewing and identifying issues for us,” added del Vecchio. “The end result is a higher quality experience that helps our mobile operator partners deliver even more value to consumers in high-growth markets.”
About Upstream
Upstream is a leading m-commerce platform, accelerating mobile commerce in high growth markets. Our platform already enables 1.2 billion people, to effortlessly receive and pay for the most relevant and affordable digital services on their mobile devices. We have 80 million paying subscribers in 45+ countries, making purchases worth $237 million in 2016 alone. We are growing rapidly, through 10 regional hubs in Latin America, Europe, Africa, South-East Asia and the Middle East.
Upstream’s single, integrated platform, offers unrivalled capabilities in localisation, customer acquisition, service delivery, payment and subscription management services. Our product portfolio includes services ranging from infotainment and micro-insurance, to gaming and video portals, app stores, m-education, and award-winning marketing promotions.
For mobile operators, we are a strong partner that leverages their unique assets to become key players in the mobile commerce space. For developers, publishers and service providers, we offer a shortcut to the next 3 billion consumers, in markets that offer the next growth frontier for digital services.