It’s Time to Upgrade Your Payment Testing Capabilities

With the Global Pandemic showing no real signs of letting go any time soon, are we at a point where we need to come up with a new definition of “disaster”? As we listen to the daily news, it seems as if every second word is about yet another disaster. Whether it is the winter storms blasting America or the resurgence of fierce forest fires as is the case in Western Australia, or even the fallout from apparent stock market manipulations, not even that infamous Chicken Little would be heard today.

No, the sky isn’t falling. But rather, with the Global Pandemic influencing much of what ails us – emotionally as well as physically – we need to come up with something more than simply saying disasters are bad. Even with the talk of vaccinations (coming soon?) there is considerable unease about just how long we will be living with COIVD-19. As for a return to normalcy, it actually feels like  any semblance of normalcy or at least what we recall as being normal is fading from memory.

There was a time when visiting a restaurant or retail store meant that we would be greeted with a smile. These days it’s hard to determine what is happening behind everyone’s masks – is our presence good news or bad? When it comes to IT and to the solutions we run, there is real concern about how well these systems will operate under the volumes we are now seeing. Even with the constraints placed upon society in terms of physically visiting a shop or bank, the ease with which we conduct eCommerce has magnified our need to be resilient in all that we provide. In the most recent post to the Paragon Edge blog, It’s Time to Upgrade Your Payment Testing Capabilities, what we mean by “disaster” and what the implications are for the Business Continuity Plans (BCP) we established prior to the Global Pandemic needs reviewing:

The definition of “disaster” has been broadened significantly by COVID-19 and the global impact caused by the ongoing crisis. Business leaders now much consider questions such as these when revisiting or building new BCPs:

• Can I operate and manage my payment systems remotely for extended periods of time?
• Do my people have access to all of the tools and resources they need to test all of the changes that will need to be made during a long-running emergency situation?
• Are my teams able to communicate and collaborate while working from remote locations?
• Have we automated and integrated our payment operations to the greatest degree possible?

We are only a matter of weeks into 2021 – having said goodbye and good riddance – to 2020, so what can we say we have learned from all that has transpired? Clearly, the most obvious take away has to be to expect the unexpected. When it comes to preparing for even more uncertainty and in this case, with respect to ensuring the level of resiliency needed to provide our clients and their customers with 24 x 7 access to the payment systems that process the financial transactions the world depends upon, then:

From my perspective here at Paragon, there are several key areas of focus:

• Move your test assets into the cloud so that they are scalable (up or down) and accessible to your staff and down-stream customers.
• IT infrastructures and certain software applications were not well positioned to facilitate a collaborative remote work environment. It is important to focus on and invest in solutions that will promote a collaborative and harmonious working environment for your teams.
• Automate and integrateyour test environments as much as possible to maximize efficiency, minimize costs and deliver the highest quality products and services.
• Innovation is critical whether you are dealing with changing market conditions or a pandemic. Getting the right testing assets in place are key to driving the innovation needed to succeed in today’s dynamic marketplace.

To read more of what I have to say about the need to upgrade your payment testing capabilities in my latest post, just click on the hyperlink below or cut and paste the URL into your favorite browser –

https://www.paragonedge.com/blog/upgrade-payment-testing-capabilities

To read additional posts on automated testing and continuous delivery, turn to the Paragon Edge Blog at –

https://www.paragonedge.com/blog