Hermes Reis, an IT Architect Specialist at Volkswagen, is part of the digital IT team. His team is responsible for most of the apps and digital solutions that the company develops. Over the past few years his team has developed and launched apps both for commercial end user use as well as internal corporate use cases. When asked to sum up his experience of using TestFairy, Hermes said “Getting straight to the point, and not spending time with activities that don’t add value.” Here are some more of the insights he shared with us: ‍

WHAT DO THE VOLKSWAGEN APPS OFFER AND HOW DO THEY FIT IN WITH THE COMPANY? ‍

“We have My Volkswagen, which is an app that is actually becoming part of the vehicle. Once you buy a Volkswagen, the manual of the vehicle is available in this app and we use artificial intelligence so that the person can verbally ask a question, and the assistant will then find the best answer to that question. It’s been a very successful application and since earlier this year, the vehicle warranty process is also supported by this app.“

“Another app that is very successful is our HR application, so every employee at Volkswagen han see the corporate communication, access their payment information, and request services through HR. We also use the artificial intelligence in this app to answer questions about processes in the company. These are just a couple of examples of our portfolio.”

GIVEN THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE AUTOMOTIVE WORLD, WHAT MAKES THE VOLKSWAGEN APPS UNIQUE? ‍

“I think we are pioneers in using artificial intelligence to support the vehicle in an app. I’m not aware that any other competitor is doing that at this point. That’s our main feature, I would say. And the ability to book a service through the app is also an innovation. We know that other companies are about to launch that, but we are pioneers of that too.”

WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES IN THE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS THAT BROUGHT YOU TO TESTFAIRY? ‍

“Well one thing that we do for certain apps is we run tests with a community of volunteers that are internal to the company. The main use that we have for TestFairy is that we can easily collect feedback from a community of testers without having to stop and see what’s happening in the app, create an issue in JIRA manually, and describe the issue. So the main characteristic that is of value for us with TestFairy is the productivity gain.”

WHAT KIND OF FEEDBACK DO YOU GET FROM THE DEVELOPERS ON YOUR TEAM WHEN USING TESTFAIRY? ‍

“It’s important that they have clear information when looking at the information in JIRA, that they don’t have to spend so much time asking questions and trying to understand what’s happening. The information is very precise. TestFairy also seems to be the only tool that easily integrates with JIRA and we like JIRA, so that’s an important asset for us.”

CAN YOU GIVE SOME SORT OF ESTIMATE AS TO HOW TESTFAIRY SAVES YOU TIME OR BUDGET? ‍

“Either we would not be able to work with so many users and get that important feedback on our testing if we didn’t use TestFairy, or we would have to extend our test period by the double. We would spend two weeks doing testing and collecting feedback as opposed to one week to complete the testing, with the same quality.”