Big Group

The Brief

Big Group is an integrated marketing communications agency providing digital, creative and marketing solutions through key verticals to a wide range of clients in the B2B & B2C sectors. The Drum Client Satisfaction Survey recently put Big Group in the Top 10 UK digital agencies.

The agency's clients include Universal Music Group, Hyundai, BT, MasterCard, Villeroy & Boch, Equinix, Samsung, Duchamp, Zalando, Winsor & Newton, Audi, Warner Leisure and PZ Cussons.

Work for Big Group's clients regularly involves building microsites and web page updates to support their frequent campaigns. As with all digital agency work, deadlines are tight, development time is pressured, and specifications and requirements often change during the development process. On top of those issues is a zero bug tolerance by the agency and their end clients - presentation matters. A badly formatted page, or a blocking issue, can severely impact click-through rates, conversions and customer retention. It is essential to test across a wide and constantly evolving mix of devices and browsers and to provide serious and planned testing and QA.

Despite this, testing is an irregular requirement, subject to peaks and troughs, and does not support a full-time team. Big Group needed a full QA service on an ad-hoc basis. This is where Test Partners came in.

Our Approach

We created a Partner Program specifically for this type of development pattern. Big Group was provided with a set number of days per month that could be called upon by the client at short notice for different testing requirements across an evolving mix of devices and browsers. We provide test expertise - covering functional, accessibility and compatibility issues - delivered through our renowned exploratory test methodology. Service also includes management of an evolving test bed of up-to-date browsers and mobile devices. Test requirements typically range from a couple of hours for a small revision to two weeks' sustained work on a larger project. We manage test resourcing and equipment, removing a large management overhead from Big Group and allowing the client to concentrate on its core operations.

The Result

In 2014 Test Partners conducted over 60 test projects for Big Group. Mirella Aslar, the Partner Program Manager, commented:  "The partner program provided by Test Partners has been running with us for a couple of years and we've found it invaluable in ensuring that the digital work we produce is right first time on deployment. Our clients expect us to create cutting edge digital products and don't think about whether they'll work or not - with help from Test Partners, we know they will."