Operational Readiness Testing ORT

Just read an interesting article on plugging revenue leaks in VoIP services by conducting Operational-Readiness Testing. For the full article visit here.

For an extract see below:

Will all of the hardware and software systems under-girding your VoIP service function correctly? That’s obviously a critically important question. Technical metrics such as packet loss and latency must be tested to ensure strong call quality, for example. Unit testing, string testing, system testing, integration testing, user-acceptance testing, stress-and-volume testing, 508-compliance testing, etc. – each of these activities plays an important role in delivering success with a VoIP service launch.
Traditionally, service providers have relied almost solely on this type of limited array of narrowly focused application and technology tests to determine whether they were set to launch a new service offering. But these alone cannot give a VoIP provider a reliable indication of whether its service is going to achieve its business goals.
Operational-readiness testing goes further to examine whether, end to end, the people (internal staff and vendors) and processes surrounding the underlying systems are ready to behave as you expect and deliver the anticipated results. The process helps you ascertain whether your company is poised to reap as much benefit as possible from its VoIP service launch. And the time to make these assurances is before you launch – before revenue leaks form and before the leaks become any more difficult to patch.

Too Expensive? Too Time-Consuming?

The reaction at the suggestion of adding another layer of testing into your VoIP service launch might be reluctance – you can’t afford the added cost, and you can’t afford the added time. First, let’s address the question of cost: Operational-readiness testing, when carried out before VoIP launch, usually pays for itself in a variety of different ways.
One reason is because, once a service is introduced and widely available, the cost of repairing broken processes or shoring up inefficient handoffs among internal and/or external personnel becomes much larger. The most affordable time to eliminate operational glitches is, far and away, before VoIP is launched and processes are adopted wholesale across operations. The same issue that might have grown into or disguised itself as something complex and systematic after launch can prove easy to solve during the period of pre-production.
Another way that pre-production operational testing pays for itself is by helping you keep your customers. Your customers’ expectations for VoIP service have been set by their experience with traditional telephone services. If your VoIP service delivers a customer experience that does not live up to that expectation, you can easily lose a customer that you worked hard to acquire. The cost of customer acquisition is high, and operational tests such as customer-experience testing help a VoIP provider achieve return on that investment.
Finally, operational-readiness testing proves valuable in the area of vendor management. Many VoIP providers have outsourced key infrastructure components to external providers. These vendors’ processes must be tightly coupled with your own to ensure seamless service rollout, quality of service (QoS) and financial performance. Pre-production operational-readiness testing helps you measure and manage your vendors.