Pressing Buttons

By: Chad Allen

Pulse Group is all about client relationships. And if there’s one golden rule of relationships, it’s that first impressions matter. When you deliver on a project to a client, sure it might not be the end of the world if there’s a bug or two - you fix it up in post and keep moving, but it is the end of a flawless delivery and it’s certainly the end of your flawless reputation. All of a sudden, you’re not perfect. That strong branded image isn’t annihilated, but now there’s a stain on it, and no matter how small, a stain is a stain.

Take our audio/visual division, which has over 20 years of experience in the automation industry. That means our processes have had twenty years plus of fine tuning, checks and balances, and accountability worked into every service we offer at Pulse Group. What does that look like? One small example would be when we deploy programming code to a property. Before the client ever sees any implementations, we have an internal team member “button press” the entire property. That’s every single light switch, touch panel, and remote. And every single one is tested to verify the code pushed is correct. Because nobody wants to realize their solutions partner forgot to test a bathroom light which didn’t work at 3 in the morning. That’s a stain.

This is 100% part of why we have been so successful in deploying the smallest of properties to the largest of properties, and why our clients are always satisfied. In fact, last year this time, one of our integrators won an award for the Best Mega Yacht design using our design and code. Fast forward to today - a little over one year into the launch of our Software Division. We have a few projects under our belt and right as our development plan for one of our largest projects was about to finalize, it was time to test. And, naturally, it was time for a “button pressing” policy and procedure for our Software Division.

One of the larger projects we are wrapping up involves FDA regulated medical instrumentation. To pass FDA Compliance you must create and pass some pretty rigorous test plans for every feature of the app. To say it’s pretty extensive would probably net us the understatement of the year award. Unlike pressing buttons for AV, software platform testing is a dynamic environment. It’s not, push button, “Okay is it on?”. You’ve got to think about all sorts of use cases, and most importantly security. You’ve got to brainstorm and try to discover every single possible way there can ever be to break this thing, and then you’ve got to make sure it doesn’t break. So after two weeks of intense work, we had created 21 test plans and over 150 items to be tested.

At the conclusion, we implemented FDA-level compliance testing to ALL software development projects at Pulse Group - a service that we are confident will make us stand out in an industry where there is very minimal transparency.

Here’s the moral of the story: before you can present your client with something, you need to have someone test to confirm that it is bulletproof. The client should not be the first to test in any scenario. Because there’s nothing better than passing a test with flying colors, and when the client gets giddy after going through their perfect dream project for their first time, they’ll know their next one will be perfect because it’ll be delivered by you. Just Imagine if your sales, PM, or Manager signed it off on a project from your deployment or programming teams as ONE additional step.

How refined would your deliveries become?