The client is a leader in the investment systems software market whose customers include some
of the world’s most prominent financial institutions. The client’s core software product is widely used for handling functions related to investment portfolios, mutual fund accounting, hedge funds and brokerage.

The client’s ability to excel in customizing its product to meet changing market requirements made it the preferred choice among financial institutions. However, in adapt the software to the needs of different financial customers, the client faced significant challenges including:

• Too much of the valuable time of the skilled internal development staff was being absorbed by testing activities
• Difficulty in meeting the short timeframes demanded by clients because of the need to test new features separately for each of the multiple client-specific versions
• Keeping up with the documentation and management of a large and rapidly growing volume of test plans.

Because the software product was available on multiple platforms and in multiple client specific customized versions, the volume of testing for even a single feature change was very large. In addition, the strict accounting and regulatory practices in the financial industry, made it imperative for the client to test each revision thoroughly.