The COVID-19 poses challenges as well as opportunities for many businesses today. The CEO and Co-founder of Ubertesters, Ran Rachlin believes that there are many opportunities in their industry. He has observed that the pandemic has forced many businesses to ‘go digital’ and improve their digital operations and services. This has resulted in his company offering a B2B solution for testing services to digital products.
The inspiration behind Ubertesters Establishment
Ran has extensive global experience, manages and leads new projects from inception to implementation and substantial revenues, and manages large global organizations in numerous countries and sectors. Before Ubertesters, he held various high-profile management roles in several large companies. Back in 2013, he co-founded Ubertesters, following a true need for a different kind of software testing that he had in his previous company. They built a mobile application in his old company and needed global testers with devices to test for them with various devices, languages, and carriers and could not find a scalable, inexpensive solution. Therefore, they came up with the idea of “Crowd testing” — a broad group of multinational freelance testers who are ready to test the consumer for every product and provide a list of bugs. The beauty of it was that the tester would do the testing during his/her spare time and make additional money.
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Make sure you keep strong ties with your team, otherwise they will leave when offered just a bit more by others.
Performing CEO’s Responsibilities
Today, Ran serves as the company’s CEO, bringing his management and business development expertise to the company. He also shapes the company’s vision because it is the only way to motivate employees and present what is needed to be achieved. The versatile leader supervises the process of developing the right team and hiring them because a great team is the only way to execute the vision well. He strives to do his best to lead the execution by enforcing a tight set of controls and operating principles and operating metric measures to track progress. “In addition to these responsibilities, I also lead the sales team. Because of my sales background, I can lead the sales team and make sure we sign the client up and keep the client satisfied,” says Ran.
A Reliable Tester For Digital Products
Ran states that a good quote to describe the company solution is, “We help our clients sleep better knowing they can launch their digital product with confidence, convinced it was well tested by real users, in their actual target market and it’s bug-free.” Ubertesters provides a full digital product software testing solution to help companies beta test their digital products before releasing them. The complete solution includes: (1) a SaaS product – a comprehensive platform to manage the mobile beta testing process and teams, (2) a crowd sourced testing service of global testers for hire with devices (using the ‘power of the crowd’) for most flexible and cost-effective global testing under real-life conditions, and (3) offshore outsourcing services of QA experts based in the company’s East European facilities. Hence, any company in need of beta testing for their products will find the best solution with Ubertesters.
Pandemic Effect
“Ubertesters is operating in the ‘outsourcing tech industry.’ We basically allow organizations to outsource the power of the crowd for their own testing or QA needs by using remote global vetted testers. Like many industries, the Crowd sourced testing industry is changing to adapt to the new post-COVID-19 dynamics,” opines Ran. He has witnessed an increased demand for their crowd testing services as many organizations had to reduce their headcount and reduce their in-house QA teams. Nevertheless, proper testing is still in demand, so businesses are finding the assistance of crowd testing services.
Also, since remote work has become the “new normal,” organizations are more open to finding the assistance of remote services. The services offered by Ubertesters provide organizations with less risk, more versatility, and a cost-effective solution. Ran shares, “As for the long-term effect – we already see the first vaccines being used globally, and I strongly believe that in roughly one year, the Coronavirus will be a thing of the past. However, the pandemic changed the way companies look at remote work and decisions taken regarding office space needs. Companies will reduce office space significantly, move away from office-centric work, and use the ‘Hybrid remote-office’ work model.”
A Supportive Work Culture
At Ubertesters, Ran believes that its core values shape its work culture and inspire its employees to do more for their customers and be better motivated. The company’s work culture puts the customer and superior customer service at the true centre. All staff must be responsible for achieving their goals and the objectives of the business. The seasoned leader states, “This is our DNA as a company, and it starts with me as the CEO. Further, we believe in accountability and recognition. As the leader, I follow their work and either hold them accountable when underperforming or recognize a job well done.”
The need to operate remotely from home is the most challenging problem. Thus, during this“new reality,” Ran had to find ways to keep the team motivated. He holds personal one-on-one meetings with all employees. He organizes virtual happy hours twice a month to get everyone together and talk about topics other than work on Friday afternoon. In this session, all employees are encouraged to share more personal experiences. Lastly, he asks all the team members to use video during ongoing work meetings (either one-on-one or community meetings). That way, they have to keep themselves in working mode, even when working remotely (dress up, sit up using a table, quiet background, etc.).
