Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
Software Testing Bureau is a company devoted solely to software testing. We provide services and we have created STELA a software testing automation platform, We help companies improve the time to market of their software projects, delivering outstanding software for their clients.
I am the CEO, and my role is to define and implement the company vision, as well as supervise the day-to-day operation.
What is the story behind starting this company?
For many years I worked in the software testing business and noticed that companies were struggling to create software that provided good value for the business, mainly by overlooking the software testing process. Our mission is to build awareness of the importance of testing and provides services that will allow companies to outsource this specialized activity to improve the speed and results of their software projects.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third-party vendors/ outsourcing?
We can accommodate both business models, but we usually prefer the third-party model, which allows us to employ our process and expertise to the fullest, bringing more value to our customers.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
Our main differentiator is that we have developed STELA, a zero-code software automation platform that allows non-technical people to create, maintain and execute automated software tests. Coupled with that is our more than 20 years of experience in the field and our specific focus on software testing.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Most of our clients are in the financial, banking, and IT industries. More than 70% of our clients are recurring clients.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
Most of our clients look for services for functional testing, both automated and traditional. Recently we have been approached by more companies looking for more sophisticated services like performance testing and security testing. Those are usually looked after for specific product launches or by more mature organizations that already have a good process for functional testing already in place.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
Approximately 80% of our customers rate our services as Excellent and Very Good. We usually do monthly reviews with customers. During the negotiating phase, we establish clear metrics that will guide the evaluation process and help us know if we are delivering value for our clients.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
Each customer has a designated project manager that oversees that everything runs according to plan, but we are also flexible enough to accommodate continuous change. Nowadays, business operations are so fluid that it is a required attribute of service companies like ours to embrace change and be flexible.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
Most of our contracts are billed by time and material. The other models of payments are more suited to development projects and are difficult for us to negotiate that kind of payment structure where we do not control the outcome of the project.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
We usually require a six-month to one-year engagement to be able to learn the specifics of the project, move past the learning curve and start delivering value.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2021?
Our current projects have a price range from 25 to 50 per hour, depending on complexity, people involved and type of services.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
We envision ourselves to be one of the leaders in the software testing industry, augmenting our presence in the US and Europe and already consolidated in LATAM.