[April 11, 2017] |
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Applause Ensures Upstream's Delivery of Flawless Mobile Services to More Than 600 Million Consumers
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 culd 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.
About Applause
Applause empowers leading brands to deliver flawless digital experiences
for their customers on any device, in every location. Applause testing,
feedback and research solutions enable businesses to delight customers,
drive topline revenue and innovate faster.
Applause ensures digital quality for websites, mobile apps, IoT products
and in-store interactions in a way no other approach can - via our
technology platform and managed global community of over 250,000
professional and on-demand testers. Only real people on real devices in
real locations can provide the real issues and feedback that brands need
to deliver great digital customer experiences. You can't hire, outsource
or automate the increasingly converged digital-physical experience that
defines real customer interaction, but you can replicate it with the
crowdsourced approach provided by Applause.
Thousands of companies of every size - including Google (News - Alert), FOX, Nike, BMW,
PayPal and Slack - rely on Applause to dramatically decrease the time
and cost of delivering great digital experiences for their customers.
Learn more at www.applause.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170411005527/en/
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