Sensormatic Solutions Integration Services team Innovate with Quality for Global Retail Technology Leader

The retail industry is evolving at a near-supersonic pace, particularly in the realm of data and technology. A study by Sensormatic found that the majority of consumers feel more comfortable when retailers implement technology that reduces unnecessary interactions, streamlines their shopping experience, and facilitates interconnected digital-physical transactions like buy online, pick up in store. In addition to meeting customer demand, retailers themselves are increasingly turning to technology solutions to help them predict consumer behavior, monitor inventory, and future-proof their business. 

Aligning with User Expectations

Hugo Manaia is a Software Quality Assurance Analyst at Sensormatic Solutions, the leading global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls. Their intelligent digital operating platform for retail, Sensormatic IQ, combines the power of unmatched insights into retail inventory, shopper behavior, and loss prevention with advanced technologies like AI and machine learning to enable the retail industry to manage their businesses with confidence. 

As a Software Quality Assurance Analyst, Hugo is part of Integration Services, a team with its roots in a startup acquired by Sensormatic which specialized in integrated RFID solutions that improve operational efficiency for retailers. He’s responsible for ensuring that his entire team produces high quality software for the beta version of their product, which will eventually integrate with existing Sensormatic solutions. 

Working with a startup foundation within a major industry leader presents unique opportunities and challenges. Though Hugo is part of a small team focused on building an innovative product, their work will immediately be accessible to a global audience of users that already know and love Sensormatic products and solutions. Ensuring that quality is built into the entire process is essential to delivering on their high expectations. To do so, Hugo needed to rethink test automation for his team’s back-office systems with web UI testing and API testing. 

Manual Testing was Becoming a Roadblock

Prior to adopting mabl, the Integration Services quality team primarily relied on manual testing. Though this strategy was sufficient in the earlier stages of product development, it was rapidly becoming unsustainable as the solutions became more complex. Hugo and the rest of the team found themselves racing to balance routine regression testing that validated the entire web application with developing testing strategies for new functionalities. They needed a more consistent approach to testing that instilled greater confidence in their work and allowed them to run tests on a regular schedule. 

But adopting automated testing posed its own risks, particularly when it came to managing the learning curve, product velocity, and the broader Sensormatic timeline. Since their work is being integrated into Sensormatic IQ and other SaaS platforms such as TrueVue Cloud, the team doesn’t have the luxury of adjusting their product delivery schedules. Though they’re a small team in a startup mindset, they need to manage the timeline and expectations of a global organization. 

Test Automation Enables Faster, More Confident Development

Fortunately, Sensormatic was already familiar with the benefits of low-code test automation with mabl. At the suggestion of his manager, Hugo signed up for a two-week free trial to see if mabl would suit the needs of the Integration Services team. He quickly realized that the simplicity of low code combined with the power of mabl’s growing range of test automation capabilities was exactly what the team needed to start their test automation journey. 

Now that mabl has been implemented for over a year, Hugo is entirely focused on automation. This allows the rest of the QA team to center manual testing on high-value activities like testing new product functionalities. Regression testing is fully automated with mabl, instilling a high degree of confidence in the product while enabling the team to build even faster. In Hugo’s own words: “We don’t need to waste time validating existing features every time a new one is developed. Everything is automatically validated, and we have much more time to focus on other activities.”

Preparing for an Integrated Testing Strategy 

One of Hugo’s eventual goals for the Integration Team’s quality and testing strategy is to eventually have API and UI centralized into one test automation framework. This way Hugo can maximize his time fully focused on automation, and automated testing can more easily be integrated into the team’s CI/CD pipeline. Since mabl is already integrated into Jenkins and offers API testing, Hugo is confident that the team can continue accelerating development without worrying about quality issues.