According to Future Market Insights, the outsourced testing services market, valued $36.4B in 2022, is predicted to reach $76.3B by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 7.7%. What drives such surging demand for quality assurance outsourcing? The key reason for this shift is rapid advancements in emerging technologies and the need of businesses to accelerate software delivery without compromising quality. However, many companies are either lacking in-house QA expertise or cannot handle the load that comes with larger development projects. Outsourcing QA services to a tech vendor helps these organizations access specialized expertise and advanced tools unavailable in-house. The right outsourcing partner can help you streamline processes, optimize costs, and deliver bug-free software on time.
However, where should you look for a reliable partner that can match your business requirements? And how do you ensure that your tech vendor has sufficient expertise to provide high-quality software QA and testing services? Explore the most popular outsourcing destinations and learn how to find a trustworthy partner in this article.
Automated vs manual testing: Which is right for your QA outsourcing needs?
When it comes to software testing, QA experts have to choose between two approaches—manual or automated testing. Both manual and automated software testing have their advantages and limitations, each fitting certain types of tasks. Once you delegate your testing to an external QA team, they will select the most suitable approach depending on your project’s unique requirements, budget, and timeline. Let’s take a closer look at each option:
Manual testing offers more flexibility since human testers can easily adjust their operations and switch from one task to another. However, just as with any process which is done by hand, manual testing is prone to human error. While it cannot match the speed of automated testing, manual requires less investment (and costs) and is, therefore, more suitable for short-term projects.
Automated testing, on the other hand, offers unprecedented speed and accuracy. The number of cases an automated testing process can run through within a few hours could take manual testers several days. However, successful automated testing implementation requires more planning and investment from your side. Therefore, it is best suited for longer-term projects where efficiency is required in the long run.
To decide which is suitable for your project, evaluate factors like project scope, budget, timeline, and the complexity of the testing process. Many organizations find that a hybrid approach, combining automated and manual testing, offers the best balance—leveraging automation for speed and accuracy and manual testing for insights and adaptability.
How to choose the best location for software quality assurance outsourcing
Once you’ve decided on the type of testing, it’s time to select a location for outsourcing QA. When companies need to hire a QA team, there are three main destinations to consider: Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Latin America, and Asia. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Quality assurance outsourcing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
Central and Eastern Europe is one of the most popular destinations for QA outsourcing. This is not surprising since several countries in this region have some of the most skilled experts in the industry. According to TopCoder ranking, engineers from Poland (number 6), and Ukraine (number 7) are among the best in the world. In addition, the region is home to a large number of QA specialists—Ukraine, Poland, and Romania make it to the top three with 42K, 22K, and 15K experts, respectively. They are followed by the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, which have over 5,000 quality assurance specialists in each country.
More on the topic: Finding the right quality assurance consulting company for your project
QA outsourcing in Latin America
Next on the list is Latin America, which has recently become a popular destination for quality assurance outsourcing, especially for US organizations. Although smaller than Asia, this region still has an impressive pool of quality assurance experts.
Countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina have many well-versed QA engineers. For example, Mexico alone is home to 16,000 specialists, while Brazil has 9,800 QA experts. Colombia and Argentina share the third place with 6K quality assurance engineers residing in each country.
In terms of skills and expertise, local tech specialists are usually ranked a bit lower than their CEE colleagues. Brazil, which is second in terms of the number of experts in the region, is ranked 16th in the world, according to TopCoder. However, for US businesses, outsourcing their QA operations to Latin American countries poses obvious advantages—geographical proximity, time zone overlap, and cultural alignment facilitate smoother communication and collaboration.
Software QA outsourcing in Asia
Asia has long been a popular destination for outsourcing various IT services, including quality assurance. The region boasts an impressive number of QA engineers, with India being the obvious leader.
However, many businesses from Western countries find it challenging to establish effective communication with an outsourced QA team in this region. This is mainly due to the relatively low quality of Internet infrastructure, which is common in local countries. Also, cultural and work ethic differences often make it challenging to find common ground.
How to find a reliable outsourcing QA provider?
There are several ways to distinguish a service provider with enough QA automation expertise that will be a reliable partner for your business. Here are the criteria that can help you assess the potential partners’ capabilities and ensure they align with your quality expectations:
1. Proven proficiency in automated testing tools and methodologies
A proven record of working with tools and various types of automated testing is a must. Your partner should be proficient in:
- Test runners:
- xUnit frameworks: TestNG, JUnit, MSTest, PyUnit, Mocha, Jest.
- End-to-end testing (E2E):
- Web UI Interfaces: Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, Watir, puppeteer, Capybara;
- Mobile UI Interfaces: Appium, Detox, EarlGrey, Espresso, UI Automator, XCTest, Calabash, Selendroid, ios-driver;
- Desktop: TestComplete, AppleScript.
- Backend testing:
- HTTP-based protocols, gRPC, etc.;
- Native HTTP clients;
- Other APIs by corresponding clients.
2. Solid experience with Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD)
Continuous integration and Continuous Deployment are commonly considered the best practices for developing software these days. What’s more, CI and CD are able to realize the full potential of automated testing. When used together, they allow engineers to quickly and easily locate code defects and make sure their code is more dependable. This, in turn, speeds up the development process and reduces the time to market of your products.
Therefore, to ensure that you take full advantage of the benefits of automated testing, your partner must have a solid knowledge of how to implement it in CI and CD.
3. Flexible approach to the choice of tools and practices
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is crucial that your tech partner is willing and able to adapt their testing processes to match all your needs. In addition to offering their preferred technologies, they must provide and be ready to adopt alternatives if using them fits your project better.
Read more: How to find the best software testing outsourcing company
3 success stories of quality assurance outsourcing with N-iX
Successful implementation of the best quality assurance practices can have a significant impact not only on a particular project but on the entire business as well. Let’s explore several real-life examples of how high-quality offshore testing services helped businesses.
Improved control quality for Code Worldwide
Code Worldwide is a digital transformation company that uses technology and data to transform their clients’ marketing. They partnered with N-iX to reduce their time to market by improving the scalability of their platform, enabling integration with key technology platforms, and making it possible to handle an increasing number of clients.
By implementing the QA process and integration testing, increasing the quality of testing documentation, and improving unit-testing coverage, N-iX engineers were able to decrease the client’s time to market by 60%.
Improving testing efficiency for a global provider of telecom technology and business services
Our client was a global company (under NDA) that provides technology and business services to wireless telecommunication enterprises worldwide. They contacted N-iX to improve their existing testing processes. These included creating a single, unified testing approach, providing a clear scope for testing, obtaining objective data for testing, and improving extendibility and time efficiency.
After the partnership with N-iX began, our engineers improved the client’s test automation processes and built a quality center that controls almost all projects within the company. We created a unified tool and simulators for testing third party applications, which have completely removed the need for manual testing and reduced the regression time from three days to three hours.
Reducing costs and time to market for Orbus
Orbus Software is a global leader in providing software solutions for Enterprise Architecture, Business Process Analysis, and Application Portfolio Management. The company needed to improve their testing operations since their extensive manual QC team constantly faced overheads due to a huge, hardly maintainable test case base. Moreover, their complicated documentation caused a lack of clear visibility of the test scope and coverage.
N-iX provided experienced QA engineers who have successfully increased testing reliability by covering E2E tests with web functional testing and introducing API/web testing that was integrated into the CI/CD process. Furthermore, our experts freed up nearly 50% of the client’s QC engineers’ time by eliminating the need for test documentation.
As a result of our efforts, the need for manual testing has decreased significantly, allowing Orbus to enjoy a much faster time to market and reduced costs.
Why should you choose N-iX as your quality assurance outsourcing partner?
- N-iX has 21 years of IT outsourcing experience, which includes outsourced software QA and testing;
- With 85% of our long-term projects involving software testing, N-iX has vast expertise in the seamless integration of QA into client workflows;
- Our team of over 150 QA experts with deep knowledge across diverse environments can tailor solutions to each unique business scenario;
- We develop comprehensive testing processes, covering everything from defining and planning test strategies to setting up the test environment, as well as creating and executing tests.
- N-iX experts are proficient in all modern manual and automated testing tools and methodologies;
- N-iX is a trusted name in the IT outsourcing industry, regularly appearing on various top lists from platforms such as IAOP, CRN, and Forrester.
FAQ
What are the benefits of software quality assurance outsourcing?
Outsourcing QA offers businesses cost savings, enhanced efficiency, and improved product quality by leveraging specialized expertise and streamlined processes. As a bonus, your internal tech teams can focus on their core priorities while your tech partner handles the heavy lifting.
How can quality assurance outsourcing help reduce our time to market?
By streamlining testing processes and leveraging automation, outsourced QA can reduce development cycles and accelerate your product release
What KPIs should we track to measure the effectiveness of an outsourced QA team?
Common KPIs include defect detection rate, test coverage, test cycle time, and defect fix rate, which can give insights into the QA team’s performance and efficiency.
How does a quality assurance partner handle security and compliance?
Reliable partners like N-iX maintain strict data security practices, often backed by industry standards (ISO 27001:2013, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, etc.), to safeguard your intellectual property and comply with relevant regulations.
