Paragon – it’s all about the need to protect your brand

Modern police forces, as well as members of today’s military, wear a lot more protection than they used to.  They can operate within some of the most hostile environments imaginable, able to see where they are going in pitch black conditions even as they attack possible hostile targets using lasers. It is a very serious undertaking whenever society calls upon such organizations for protection. When it comes to modern enterprises however, the story isn’t quite the same. While those protecting us will quickly tell you who they are with – police, the army, the marines, etc., it isn’t quite that simple for modern enterprises.  In many cases, they operate every day in a very competitive environment, where other companies are trying their very best to “steal” business or even disrupt and entire market segment, to the point that their brand may be under open attack.

When it comes to financial services brands, it’s important that they project strength and stability, but also the flexibility to be responsive to rapidly changing business environments and opportunities (important for both customers and shareholders). Not many companies want to be seen as too conservative, just as not many business would admit to simply staying the course.  And for good reason – the dynamics in today’s business world will simply not allow an enterprise, no matter how big or small they may be, to just keep on doing what they always have been doing. If you aren’t growing, you are by definition and someone else is taking business away from you.

When it comes to the underlying infrastructure of IT that supports the business, change is a constant. This is particularly the case for financial institutions that not only have to fend off fierce competition from their traditional rivals but need to remain watchful as new FinTechs emerge left, right and center. In many cases, the FinTechs are not burdened with support obligations for the complex financial infrastructure required to support traditional financial operations.  So it is a real challenge for financial institutions is to be seen as flexible and agile, while their brand was built on more conservative concepts of strength and security.

This was the theme of a recent post to the Paragon Edge blog, Protecting the brand – financial institutions turn to Paragon to automate product testing to keep them flexible! “Among the more compelling reasons why traditional financial institutions need to up their investment in testing solutions is that so much is changing around them,” said Paragon CEO Jim Perry.  “They need to become more flexible in order to be able to take on whatever new threats or payment types or partnership opportunities happen next. You can’t do that working off Excel spreadsheets.  A completely automated testing environment can help provide this flexibility and can help ensure the ongoing relevance of the organization.” Simply rerunning outdated scripts, feeding the same old data back into test decks assembled decades ago or worse, pulling items from a spreadsheet will not cut it anymore – the environment into which we are introducing new products and features is too dynamic and too demanding to be effectively tested using the staid manual processes of former times.

Your brand is worth defending, and the perception of your company in the marketplace has to ensure your customers you are worthy of their business. Change happens fast and user experiences evolve with each and every new smart device. Most companies simply can’t add enough people to test everything, nor would such additional personnel necessarily be an improvement, if the underlying tools for testing remained the same. Expanding on his earlier observation, Perry said, “Deploying a robust automated testing environment – one that can be readily tailored to address new functionality and new services offerings – helps organizations mitigate project and business risks, while streamlining business operations. Banking has always been about managing risk, but typically within known parameters / coordinates.”

Should you require additional information about the product offerings from Paragon please feel free to call us or drop us an email.

Written by the Paragon Team and we can be reached at:

World Headquarters:
326 Raleigh Street
Holly Springs, NC 27540

Phone: +1-919-567-9890
Email: info@paragonedge.com