I just caught up with Syntellect to see what has gone on since I last blogged about Voiyager, Syntellect’s incredible application testing technology. I’d seen a few press releases on recent successes, including one in April on a win of one of the largest dental insurance carriers (name withheld to further disappoint this analyst in her 12 days of UC wish for more referenceable accounts). Besides not revealing the customer name, the press release left out some of the jaw dropping results of the customer test. The main details of the press release were:
“Voiyager Dynamic Application Discovery provided the major insurance carrier with the only solution available to thoroughly evaluate their new VoiceXML application before accepting the application from their service provider. Voiyager uses unique technology to fully exercise an application, uncover potential errors and validate that the application business logic meets the design requirements. Navigating the application as many as 38,000 times in five hours, Voiyager was able to provide the benefits carrier with information needed to identify defects, uncover design discrepancies and subsequently communicate the required changes to their application provider. During this process, Voiyager identified items that would have otherwise been costly for the benefits carrier to address had they been uncovered after the acceptance period. “
Voiyager allowed the benefits carrier to analyze and test the application substantially more than they could have done using traditional testing methods in the 30 days they had to sign-off on the application acceptance. As a result, they will be using Voiyager going forward to assist in maintaining and updating the new application.”
Although I have to admit that the bit about navigating the application as many as 38,000 in five hours was pretty slick, it was the unsaid punch behind the “identified items that would have otherwise been costly for the benefits carrier to address had they been uncovered after the acceptance period”. It turns out that unsaid insurance company was developing their application on an IVR of a big unnamed (so that this analyst doesn’t disappoint big unnamed service provider) third party platform provider. Voiyager was brought in to test the application rather than use a dozen or so people over x amount of time to test, which is what is normally done. Voiyager found a significant enough amount of errors that deployment was delayed. The key part, however, was that Voiyager, in no time found the equivalent of about a half million dollars of post deployment hassle. Without Voiyager, the insurance carrier would have had eat the cost of because they would have signed off on the application. Now that is nice.
What also wasn’t said was that without Voiyager the head of QA would have had to maintain the equivalent of 16 people over two years to maintain the system, but by using Voiyager instead, they only need two. That is nicer.
On a side note, Voiyager Dynamic Application Discovery uncovers lots of things that amuse Syntellect’s development team, including in excess of 5000 interpretations of VoiceXML 2.0 and 2.1. In fact, every time a platform provider says that an application is 100% compliant with the spec, it takes about 15 minutes for Voiyager to come back and say it isn’t in some fashion. Some of those interpretations are incorporated in the Voiyager design going forward, but others are rejected.
If you still haven’t checked it out, go to Syntellect’s site and see the demo. I’m sure you will be amazed. Also, stay tuned for more. I got a peek at what is coming up for Voiyager and its equally amazing.