case study
Global parcel shipping company operates at peak performance thanks to automated continuous testing of mission-critical application
OUR CLIENT
This Fortune 500 company is a global leader in shipping, receiving and supply chain management. With operations in more than 200 countries, the company delivers more than 20 million packages a day and generates revenue of more than $100 billion annually.
THE CHALLENGE
Global company wanted to automate testing of mission-critical application
To manage the tremendous volume of daily business transactions, this company uses an advanced tracking application to manage the flow of internal packages, vehicles, employees, and other critical business factors. The company conducted regular stress tests to ensure the application functionality was reliable. However, the software development team had to manually conduct tests because testing data was stored in many different systems-making the data difficult to access, costly to maintain and prone to error. The company also wanted more flexibility to add and upgrade functionality in the tracking application, such as GPS location capabilities.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Integrated test automation tool into DevOps framework
The company engaged with UST Xpanxion to enhance its tracking application because of UST’s deep expertise in DevOps, automation and QA testing. The shipping company integrated an intuitive testing tool into its DevOps CI/CD ecosystem and automated load and stress tests of backend infrastructure and essential functionality. The new testing tool triggers a series of test scripts that automatically run with every build and release, providing data on the application’s performance characteristics for each release.
THE IMPACT
Improved performance and reliability of core business tracking application
Now, the company’s software engineering team is much more productive, and application releases are more reliable — across all key indicators, such as speed, performance, and data quality. And, since the flow of test data is automated, the team no longer has to worry about issues caused by human errors and siloed data. The integrated, automated, continuous testing tool helps the shipping company’s DevOps team identify issues and bottlenecks before problems arise in the production application, helping to ensure the company can deliver top-notch customer service at all times. Also, the company now has more flexibility to enhance the application with additional capabilities for load-heavy services, such as GPS vehicle location.