Client
Kitco Metals Inc.
Industry
Financial Services
Features
iOS-to-Android App Conversion
Testing Services
Mantis
TestLink
Java for
Android
Kitco has been the premier resource for precious metal traders, providing access to comprehensive market news and analysis for nearly fifty years. They have had a digital presence for more than a quarter-century, reaching millions of investors throughout the world.
The investment services industry is worth more than 235 billion dollars, and Kitco had managed to carve out a niche serving gold traders (and traders of other precious metals). Given the fast-moving, immensely complicated nature of financial services, they needed to move quickly to stay ahead of the competition.
Kitco’s Kcast & Gold Live! smartphone app was incredibly popular among iPhone users. With the growth of alternative smartphone platforms challenging the iOS market domination, they decided it was time to expand into other platforms. That included not only Android phones but Blackberry and Windows phones as well, which were popular at the time.
To this end, they sought to hire a technical partner that understood Android development and could help them translate their iOS application to Android (their most requested alternative platform).
Kitco discovered Net Solutions in their search for a reliable Android app developer. Impressed by Net Solutions’ credentials and talent pool, the Kitco team hired them for the job.
The team at Net Solutions received the iOS app code for both the free and paid versions of the Kitco apps. The development team dug into the code to plan development, and the design team coordinated with Kitco to source design asset resolutions that worked perfectly with Android phones of different sizes, resolutions, and capabilities.
During the initial project, Kitco’s Brian Dix was promoted from Project Manager for KCast’s iOS development team to Supervisor of Kitco’s Mobile Innovation Group. Impressed by Net Solutions’ quality work while building the Android app, along with their adherence to Agile methods and impeccable processes and documentation, he decided to outsource Kitco’s testing services for all the platforms and devices they intended to serve.
By the time Net Solutions completed the Android app, Kitco had set up their internal Android development team. So Net Solutions handed the source code over to them to build out the app further.
On the other side of the engagement, Net Solutions worked to test different Kitco products across a range of platforms and devices. Net Solutions’ testing efforts included devices on the following platforms:
Their efforts ranged from UI testing to functional testing on a number of devices and even varying bandwidth conditions. It also included multilingual sanity tests—which ensured that the systems displayed everything visible in a single, selected language.
The testing team at Net Solutions used TestLink to document the various test cases. They also performed testing with emulators and Device Anywhere to physically test the systems on the entire range of devices that Kitco chose to support. They logged all bugs on Mantis, giving Kitco’s development team immediate access to the data.
We're happy with the quality of the resulting application. Communication, response-time, and customer service were very good.
Since Net Solutions was headquartered on the opposite side of the planet (literally), Brian’s development team could push out a build at the end of the business day, and the Net Solutions team could spend their day testing and generating feedback—which was ready for the developers when they walked into the office.
The result? This round-the-clock development and testing cycle roughly cut the time it took to test these products by half.
Net Solutions’ testing helped ensure that the quality of Kitco’s software and the overall user experience did not vary between different platforms and devices, granting all Kitco customers a seamless user experience. Net Solutions continually impressed Kitco management, and the relationship lasted several years.
Net Solutions worked side-by-side with Kitco developers to build an Android app and handle testing for other platforms and devices.
The multi-year engagement produced:
The engagement lasted several years and allowed them to provide an exceptional user experience to Kitco’s customers.
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