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Research requires formal scientific activities, such as surveys and tracking customer activity in the aggregate. But, listening to customers is perhaps the most important. It used to be that large financial institutions tended to regard customer service as an inconvenience. Dealing with customers was considered to have a poor cost/benefit ratio. Not anymore; not if financial institutions want to remain profitable in the future. The digital age is the age of communication and that means that businesses must listen to their customers if they wish to survive. They must listen and understand. And, more than ever, financial consumers want to be rewarded for their patronage.

The digital revolution has enabled customers to not only have easier access to their funds, but to also have easier access to information as well. This gives banks the opportunity to provide discounts and other incentives based on consumer spending patterns. The massive increase in information exchange gives financial institutions the opportunity to recognise customers as individuals and treat them accordingly. This is a considerable improvement over the old corporate mindset of treating customers as statistics.  

However, there is a new business term on the horizon and it carries the disturbing name "convergent disruption." This is a new sort of competition. While the banking industry has had its ups and downs, it has always competed with other banks and, to a lesser extent, credit unions and loan companies. The digital age has brought a new era of competition from numerous unconventional directions ranging from PayPal to Bitcoin.

This means that conventional financial institutions must become more flexible and willing to offer unconventional services. At the moment, most of these new services have to do with processing and presenting information in near real time. However, there will be many more new services in the future, as the Internet is changing the very nature of money.

In the future, banks can offer other services such as partnering with key retailers to provide new conveniences for customers. This means that the consumer is never alone. There is always someone to assist with things such as pre-sale advice on big ticket items, along with customer support post-purchase and discounts and cross selling during the purchase process. All these different ways of interaction allow for new profit vectors for financial institutions that will no longer have to rely solely on traditional sources, such as loans.

The future is bright, as the digital age will redefine what banking and finance are all about. And it all starts with understanding the customer and his or her needs

Software development is an area of constant change. Much of this is being driven by improvements in Internet platforms. There are fewer and fewer exclusively offline applications and more and more processing is being done in the cloud. This means that software applications must be more sophisticated, more user friendly and more easily integrated with other applications than ever before.

But, that’s not all. Enterprises must also change rapidly in order to keep up with ever more sophisticated customer demand from an increasingly tech savvy clientele who demand higher speed purchases, faster and more relevant communication and a greater choice of payment options. Technology has become the single biggest driver of change in the modern world and business is at the forefront of that change.

When it comes to technology, the development and deployment of enterprise software, along with software customization and packaged applications are the main beneficiaries of software configuration management. SCM makes change manageable through the use of integrated automated systems that record change, often as it happens, and provides a development trail that can be easily followed. It versions the different files and keeps track of them as development progresses. This prevents missed change requests, unfixed software bugs and other defects that can damage customer confidence or delay deployment of critical updates. It also makes certain that handoffs occur more easily by making concurrent development possible. Timelines then become more predictable and applications are deployed faster and with less errors.

Software configuration management answers the five Ws, Who, What , When, Where and Why, by maintaining records of changes and what impact these changes have on the application under development as well as upgrades and releases. SCM may require some investment, but it lowers overhead in the long run by reducing wasted time, speeding the development cycle and increasing customer satisfaction.

Lasting for nearly a year, from July 2014 to June 2015, the problem resulted in winnings of $1,088,120 not being distributed.

A review of the problem also showed that only those who placed a bet at least a dollar larger than their previous bet were qualified for the progressive jackpot, which was in violation of the game rules.

B. C. Lottery Corp's spokesperson Susan Dolinski said that the game was removed from the PlayNow.com sight on July 10, 2015 and a review determined that nine players had won the progressive jackpot during the eleven month error period with total winnings of almost 1.1 million dollars. She also said that those who had won money during that period would keep their winnings and those who had experienced a loss within the same time frame would be reimbursed.

Nevada has recently licensed the first autonomous commercial vehicle. The Freightliner Inspiration semi-truck promises to make the road safer while cutting back on traffic congestion and reducing fuel consumption. But don’t expect to see completely driverless trucks on the road any time soon. The Freightliner still needs a driver to handle emergency situations and the truck cannot pass slower vehicles all on its own.

However, the concept of the self-driving vehicle isn’t new. The Google self-driving car has been in the works for a while and Apple has also been working on the concept. If anyone can overcome the massive software difficulties involved, it’s these two digital giants. And they aren’t the only ones. Major manufacturers like Ford and GM, along with smaller companies like Tesla, are all working on building autonomous self-driving cars.

However, there’s still a way to go. But, like so many other forms of digital technology, convenience is a big selling point. The up and coming executive can work on that report while sitting behind the wheel and not driving as his car drives itself to work. Texting while driving will end and bumper stickers reading, “Get off the damn phone and drive!” will disappear. Safety will increase as accidents are reduced and the automobile may even cease to be an object of personal expression as driving is no longer an example of human skill. Vehicle ownership may even disappear. Want to go shopping? Just make a phone call and an autonomous vehicle will drive itself to your door, take you on your errands and then bring you home, drop you off and then head out on its next assignment. 

Is this a vision of the future? Well... maybe. It’s important to remember that people hardly ever demand improvements in technology.  Sometimes, they don’t even trust them. However, the day inevitably comes when that new technology becomes so ingrained that people can’t conceive of living without it. The next “can’t live without” technology is already on the road.

They will probably start out as small and experimental proof of concept vessels, that provide the means for testing the technology and determining just how autonomous they can actually be. Like the self-driving trucks of today, they will undoubtedly need human input to cope with certain tasks. So, they will in effect be drone ships remotely piloted from shore.

Remotely piloted semi-independent vessels have a number of advantages, not the least of which is saving on personnel.  While modern digital technology has reduced the number of crew on the modern ocean going ship, drone ships offer the possibility of reducing the crew down to one person, steering the ship from a remote location.

Unmanned ships make possible the first true rethinking of naval architecture since the development of steam. Since the interior of the ship need not be designed for human comfort, there is more room for machinery and, more importantly, cargo. At least one third of the average cargo vessel is dedicated to human habitation, and so a redesign of this now free space can enable the carrying of greater loads.

However, the advent of drone ships means that regulations must be enhanced to ensure safe operation. These regulations must be uniform from country to country in order to assure secure ocean passage and the safe entering and leaving of harbors. This means that flags of convenience will become a thing of the past. It will no longer be possible to save money and avoid safety regulations by registering a ship in a country with low maritime standards. And this is probably a good thing.

Australian grocery shoppers who headed to Coles supermarkets on Sunday morning were greeted with a disappointing surprise. For over three hours, Coles stores across Australia were closed due to a computer bug that was making it impossible for their registers to process sales.

Not every store in the chain was affected, but the bug affected stores all over the country. Most stores had signs in the windows informing customers about the closure. The sign posted at one Melbourne Coles read:

"Attention Customers: Due to a network error, our registers are down and we are unable to finalise purchases. Unfortunately this is state wide. Sorry for any inconveniences. The doors will remain closed until this issue has been solved."

Coles stayed mum over its official channels until about 10 AM local time, when they issued a statement announcing that the stores had reopened.

The statement said: "Earlier this morning we had some minor IT problems in some of our supermarkets which were out of our team members' control. We apologise for any inconvenience our customers experienced earlier this morning."

Many customers voiced their feelings on Facebook and Twitter, frustrated with the absence of an official explanation from the closure from Coles while it was ongoing. Some customers waited for long periods of time at the stores, waiting for the registers to get back up and running. A few stores were able to stay open by getting a single register running. At least one Coles location in Canberra tried to smooth things over by offering free snacks and other treats during the downtime.

This is not the first time an Australian supermarket chain has been taken offline by technical issues. In April, a glitch affected Woolworths stores, leading many customers to abandon their shopping carts and go home.

As of yet, the nature of the glitch that took Coles registers offline all morning has not yet been explained. While it might have been "minor" from an IT perspective, the cost of the lost sales, bad press, and other effects of the shutdown are anything but.

Incidents like these highlight the risk of leaving multiple store locations dependent on a centralised network hub, where the impacts of even a minor computer bug can be greatly amplified.

Beta was for startups which had raised between 500,000 and 3 million dollars and Alpha for companies which had raised up to 500,000 in funding. Although, Bugwolf has been bootstrapped since inception and has not raised any funding to date, we were selected for Beta due to our strong revenue growth.

We made it all the way to the very end, taking the stage with just two other Beta startups in one of my most exciting opportunities of my career as an entrepreneur and the history of Bugwolf. Most of the finalists had already raised significant funding. Although we came close runners up, to get this far was a huge achievement.

But, the Web Summit was more than just an opportunity to pitch. It was an unprecedented networking event that will have positive effects long after it has ended.

We have reached a new level since we began as a small Australian startup only two years ago. That new level made it worthwhile traveling over 20,000 kilometers to attend this year’s Web Summit. We have networked with many new friends and met important investors such as Dave McClure from 500 Startups and Brian Caulfield from Draper Esprit.

Being a bootstrap company, the chance to meet important investors was highly welcome. We were able to reach out to a number of investors and had several very productive meetings that may bear fruit in the future. Not to mention the huge wave of new enquiries and positive feedback that we welcomed to our exhibition stand on Day 3 of Web Summit.

There were many important takeaways from this experience. Not the least of which was that our business model is growing and developing at a rate that could not even be imagined only a few years ago. Bugwolf intends to stay focused on addressing the rising cost of quality in the digital sector which cost the economy $300 billion per annum in 2013 and continues to grow rapidly. We are more focused and determined than ever before to put Bugwolf and the Australian startup ecosystem on a global stage.

In the end, a local Irish startup called Bizimply, one of Bono’s (U2) investments and companies, took out the Beta main prize. Bono invests in startups via his investment firm Elevation Partners and they have made some great investments. Bizimply did not get picked by the Beta judges from the semifinals so they must have been selected as the wild card entry or for winning the Irish startup competition.

Congratulations to Bizimply for winning in addition to taking Ireland’s Spark of Genius Award - a clean sweep and a fantastic achievement. It was great to see the main prize go to a local Irish startup, especially given it's the last year for Web Summit in Ireland and next year the event is being exported to Lisbon, much to the regret of the Dublin locals.

The Bizimply co-founder later said he thought Bugwolf had won it, which was a really nice endorsement by the winner of the Web Summit. High five to Mikey Cannon Co-Founder and head of Product and to his team at Bizimply for a great business. You did awesome Mikey!

We’ll be back!

Bugwolf is proud to have has been working with Australia Post across a number of its digital products to improve usability and speed to market. It's really exciting to be working with such a respected organisation, providing digital products and services that are used by millions of Australians everyday. An announcement by Australia Post on Thursday made the relationship public for the first time. Australia Post has been working with Bugwolf from early inception and the relationship has gone from strength to strength. We've enjoyed working with such an outstanding digital team who have a relentless focus on quality and innovation. The full release and links to the coverage are below.

The Australia Post and Bugwolf Case Study Short Version

• Australia Post has partnered with Melbourne-based technology startup Bugwolf in a new way to iron out customer issues with rapid product releases.
• Bugwolf has a unique on-demand marketplace and SaaS platform which gamifies the testing process where elite testers compete to perform tasks like customers.
• Bugwolf recognises that real world users do not follow test scripts and the journeys customers take are varied and at times unpredictable.
• Bugwolf transformed Australia Post's testing methodology to accelerate the process and increase the test coverage of customer facing applications – reducing the likelihood of poor customer experience being released to market.
• Bugwolf provides this in a fully managed service, vetted, and secure environment, which is critical in ensuring their digital products remained confidential.
• Bugwolf attracts the best software testers from around the world and are not limited by their geographic location providing access to a wide variety of testers who would typically not be available.
• Bugwolf decreases testing cycle times from weeks to days.
• The unique Bugwolf platform allows organisations to do testing on the glass on a device and allows Bugwolf test like real customers on a variety of hardware and operating systems.
• Bugwolf provides a fresh set of eyes reviewing digital products prior to release and a team of elite testers who rigorously test them in the same way customers use them. 

Bugwolf and Australia Post Media Coverage

How Australia Post is improving test-and-learn around customer products
Brad Howarth - CMO Australia
Australia Post brings on Bugwolf real-world testing tool to help iron out customer issues with rapid product releases…

Australia Post crowdsources bug fixes
David Swan - Herald Sun
Melbourne-based crowdsourced testing start-up Bugwolf’s partnership with Australia Post has seen their apps put through it’s paces to identify potential problems. Deployment of elite testers using an on-demand marketplace and Software as a Service platform has gamified the testing process...

Australia Post calls in Bugwolf
Leon Gettler - Business First Magazine
Australia Post has teamed up with Bugwolf, a startup that crowdsources people who beta test apps and websites....

This startup is teaming up with Australia Post to bring it up to digital speed
Alex Heber - Business Insider Australia
Australian startup Bugwolf has teamed up with Australia Post to accelerate the organisation’s digital product releases and help it become more agile as snail mail dies off...

Australia Post picks Melbourne start-up Bugwolf for app testing
David Swan - The Australian Business Review
Australia Post has partnered with Melbourne-based crowdsourced testing start-up Bugwolf to iron out the kinks in its customer-facing apps. The partnership has seen the deployment of elite testers who put the apps through their paces in an attempt to identify potential problems....

Click here for all Bugwolf press coverage

About Australia Post

Australia Post is an Australian government-owned enterprise, providing postal services in Australia and its overseas territories. Founded in 1809, the organisation has been keeping Australia connected for over 200 years by delivering mail, helping businesses and consumers with parcels, and providing a national retail network that supports local communities and organisations. In 2014, it reported revenue of $6.4 billion and after-tax profit of $116.2 million.

The Challenge

Australia Post receives as many as 10 million digital customer visits per month, from Australia and around the world, to access its products and services. Australia Post wanted to find a way to increase the speed of testing cycles, release apps bug free, and reduce the spike in help desk volumes, all while ensuring a seamless customer experience across multiple devices and web platforms.

“Disruption of the classic testing strategies was clearly in order”.

Australia Post recognised a need to transform its traditional approach to testing and quality management to ensure a better user experience in less time. While applications could be tested locally, the organisation had limited access to resources during regular releases to test how their applications responded across different operating systems, devices, and regions.

In addition to test automation, Australia Post typically engages testers onsite to run user-based test cases. In this scenario, test coverage is limited to a small pool of testers and devices using pre-scripted tests. Furthermore, this method is considered too structured to truly cover all aspects of a system. “In the real world users do not follow test scripts and the journeys our users take are varied and at times unpredictable” says Steve Maidment, General Manager - Digital Channels and Innovation at Australia Post. Disruption of the classic testing strategies was clearly in order.

Why Bugwolf Elite Teams?

Bugwolf is the leader in on-demand customer experience testing. The Bugwolf Elite Teams enabled Australia Post to leverage the benefits of having a fresh set of eyes reviewing their digital products prior to release and a team of professional testers who rigorously test applications in the same way customers use them. The testers have limited knowledge prior to testing which means they make no assumptions as to how an application might work. They do this in a fully managed, vetted, and secure environment, which is critical in ensuring their digital products remained confidential.

Bugwolf attracts the best software testers from around the world due to their potential involvement in world-class and leading software releases and not limited by their geographic location. This delivers a much faster result with greater ‘on the glass’ test coverage and more high value bugs typically discovered in the process. The Bugwolf approach reduces traditional cycles from weeks to days, lowers the cost of testing by up to 50%, and provides up to 10x accelerated test coverage than traditional testing methodologies.

“We were looking for a solution to help us better manage spikes in application user testing, and a plug-and-play type service to act as an extension of our existing teams as and when needed. We were also looking for a solution that would improve the quality of user experience over a traditional UAT and BVT process”, says Mr Maidment. “We looked at a number of companies, solutions and technologies and selected Bugwolf because they had something innovative to offer”.

Australia Post engaged Bugwolf to help transform its testing methodology and mindset to accelerate the process and increase the test coverage of customer facing applications – reducing the likelihood of poor customer experience being released to market.

Using a combination of bounty based game mechanics and crowd sourced elite teams, Australia Post achieved test coverage and engagement unlike other services they had utilised in the past.

By utilising an on-demand customer experience testing model, they were able to test across a range of different device configurations and geographic locations while keeping their new product releases confidential. Another key advantage of the Bugwolf approach was that testing could continue over the weekend during scheduled downtime. This significantly reduced the impact of testing on the performance of the asset and teams during normal business hours.

“We selected Bugwolf, because they had something innovative to offer”.

Bugwolf orchestrated a broad test, identifying 176 bugs (stack-ranked and prioritized) across the domains of usability, user experience, content, and accessibility to name a few. We provided a comprehensive report back to the leaders inside the business, across both product development and engineering, which could be utilised by their in-house test and development teams to improve development and design processes for future projects.

The report provided context relating to each bug, and included details such as browser type, device, operating system, and location of the bug hunter. We also provided explicit details for each bug including a screencast, making it easy for their teams to replicate the issues.

Uniquely, the team put the Australia Post identity verification process through its paces, allowing our elite teams to push the workflows of the system using different user accounts. We provided each professional tester with a high level view of the different customer flows and they were incentivised to perform tasks like a customer. We kept the test plan and guidelines to a minimum which allowed testers to follow unique paths and discover defects which most automation or traditional testing process may not have identified. To allow us to test in a real world environment, our teams were attacking a production version of the application and rigorously testing the on-boarding process.

The Benefits

By using Bugwolf, Australia Post increased their test coverage for both application workflows and devices, discovering many important bugs which had not been previously uncovered using the traditional approach. This had a direct, positive impact on Australia Post end user digital experiences, and increased overall test cycle efficiency. “Bugwolf improved the user experience, improving customer satisfaction. Prior to this, we were reliant on a small team of testers, who developed structured test scripts using a limited device pool for on-the-glass testing. This resulted in limited device coverage and a lack of confidence in the end to end user experience” says Steve Maidment.

“A considerable degree of obscurity exists surrounding the development process and few organisations recognize opportunities for compressing the testing cycle through disruptive innovations.”

Some of the key benefits Australia Post recognised:

• Elite testers who test applications like customers use them
• Access to key talent pool which are typically not available
• Accelerate testing cycles and speed up product releases
• Extend device and browser and testing in different regions
• On-demand testing which can be utilised when needed

As with so many organisations that have applied what the industry has come to accept as testing “best practices”, a considerable degree of obscurity exists surrounding the development process. Consequently, few organisations recognize opportunities for compressing the testing cycle through disruptive innovations. As Mr Maidment summarized, “We didn’t know what we didn’t know.”

Next Steps

The internet is always changing and few organisations implement proactive measures to ensure that software and web application quality is maintained after their initial release. In recognition of this, Australia Post have chosen Bugwolf to provide on-going testing maintenance throughout the year. Bugwolf Elite Teams will be assembled to attack the same application and report back on defects they discover regularly, while also highlighting opportunities for improvement, staying ahead of the technology adoption curve.

I’m writing this post from experience of being in the trenches, bootstrapping a startup Bugwolf for the past few years and doing so from Australia. I can say from experience that without the Australian Government and Enterprise support, Bugwolf would not be where we are today. In fact, programs such as the R&D program and Export Grants have come at times of our business where the funding was critical for our existence and growth.

Government support has put Australian startups on the map and not only regionally but also globally. Politicians and entrepreneurs around the world have taken notice and are taking a real look at our country as being a home for their companies. Just look at the long list of companies and tech leaders from the US which are now gracing our cities. Recently, these include Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square and Stewart Butterfield of Slack. Many others have now set up offices in Australia.

When you take a step back a few years, a startup would typically not get a meeting with a digital leader in a large enterprise due to the difficulty of doing business with smaller suppliers. Today, since Prime Minister Turnbull became leader, startups have had an overwhelming amount of support from business and the government. Big companies want to take your calls, while large enterprises are throwing their weight behind local startups, and are striving to be more like startups themselves.

We recently spent a few days in Canberra meeting with many of the large government departments. In fact, the door was opened by a leader in the technology government space after attending an event we pitched at. From spending only a few days in Canberra I got the real sense that an innovation and startup shift was happening. There was an intense interest and focus on supporting and working with startups.

To support this view you should spend a few minutes listening to John Chambers who was the CEO of one of the world's most innovative technology companies Cisco. His message is clear that all cities will be and must be digital to survive. I also attended a talk by Brett King on disruption and innovation and he was quoted saying if your CEO is not tech today your company will be wiped out in 10 years. The same goes for our country's leader in my view.

The way you vote come July is probably one of the biggest votes you will make. Our country is in a race on a global scale in the digital revolution and the impact of voting is high as 4 years in power is an enternity in tech. Your vote will impact Australia's life blood and the country's risk takers. It's these people which will create jobs of the future and give Australian’s opportunities which are more rewarding and meet the way you want to work.

In the past 10 years I would definitely agree most parties have been identical and in recent years have followed near similar policies. I've also never been that political, but this time I know what's coming and have experienced what it’s like to risk everything, and how tough it can be to build a technology company from nothing in Australia. The support the government programs provided has been instrumental in our company’s  survival.

I totally disagree that the Australian Government has not done enough, and believe Aussie tech startups live in the lucky country. In fact even without the latest announcements regarding funding and innovation support we are already in a great place. I can only imagine what the future holds for the entrepreneurs in Australia. The government and enterprise support has meant we have not needed to migrate to the US or take funding.

Bugwolf will continue to remain headquartered in Australia under the leadership of Malcolm Turnbull and Australian Liberal Party, and not without the support of many Australia’s leading enterprises. We are so lucky to have someone leading our country that has been involved in startups, who has taken a startup from zero to hero, and to have attracted companies like NAB and Australia Post willing to support local innovation and startups.