Menu
Vitech
Software for Insurance, Retirement and Investment Administration
Search
  • Products
    • V3locity
      Overview
      CoreAdmin
      Digital
      ClaimsCenter
      CampaignCenter
      DataInsight
      Industries
      Group Insurance
      Annuities & PRT
      Retirement
      Alternative Investments
  • Technology
  • Services
  • News/Events
    • News
      Events
      VitechCONNECT
  • Resources
    • Resources
      Blog
  • Careers
    • Careers
      Careers in India
  • About
    • About
      Leadership
      Partners
      Customers
      Contact
  • Contact Us
Close Menu
February 22, 2022

Total Quality, the Vitech Way

Introduction

“Quality comes not from inspection, but from the improvement of the production process.”
― W. Edwards Deming

MBAs, engineers, and techies like myself snap to attention whenever we hear the name W. Edwards Deming. The “Father of Quality,” an engineer, statistician, and business theoretician, Deming was the leading contributor to Total Quality Management (TQM), a management philosophy whose goal is continuous organizational improvement to achieve long-term success. According to Deming, success is defined as customer satisfaction and ongoing employee excellence, with organizations, clients, and society all benefitting from the efforts and end results.

Although Deming’s ideas and TQM were overshadowed by later 20thcentury management frameworks such as GE’s Six Sigma, they share many of the same principles of continuous improvement with a focus on quality throughout each stage of production, and early mappings of processes necessary for customer satisfaction. Not surprisingly, these same principles are central to Vitech’s total quality initiative, “Quality 360,” which establishes a quality-focused partnership with clients throughout each project to ensure successful rollouts without sacrificing high-level results.

Quality 360 Fundamentals

A QA Collective

No matter how long or complex the implementation, Vitech’s Quality 360 methodology makes the quality of the implementation the responsibility of all involved, including SMEs, decision-makers, and other key staff. This communal responsibility is the foundation of the project, with common frameworks, tools, and governance models embedded throughout each stage.

A “Shift Left” Mindset

Quality 360 is outcome focused and leverages a “shift left” mindset (referring to the early placement of a project task, typically situated on the far left of an illustrated project timeline). A first step is to determine how clients intend to use the system, and then incorporate their perspectives in the development and testing processes while in its early stages. By shifting left, product teams also conduct testing early in the process to find issues and prevent costly errors, for a smooth user acceptance testing and go-live.

A Data Definitive

Similar to TQM methodology, Quality 360 prioritizes and measures quality KPI data at each stage of the process and incorporates it immediately into future decision making. Just like TQM, Quality 360 measures data definitively and repeatedly, to feed the outputs directly back into testing for future, error-free approaches. This practice is a big departure from standard implementations and helps identify potential pitfalls and challenges much earlier in the project timeline, well before completion.

Looking Ahead

Despite all the attention paid to the current project and testing processes, it’s important not to lose sight of the project’s end state and how clients will use the system in years to come. It will eventually go live and power the client’s business, so Quality 360 also incorporates a long-term, future-focused strategy for clients, and leverages key learnings for future engagements. For example, during the implementation, Vitech project teams partner with clients to develop a library of business-driven regression tests that match the client’s expected results, and are subsequently automated to capitalize on speed and accuracy. This is particularly forward-looking as the “shift-left” approach to automated testing is an investment that will pay off in future system upgrades.

Final Thoughts

Quality 360’s market-driven approach helps balance project development speed with constant quality assurance. With project team engagement, testing early and often, and incorporating key learnings into current and future projects, Vitech can ensure that expedited projects are embedded with quality from start to finish. In other words, enabling the total quality outcomes of which Dr. Deming himself would approve.

For the related Vitech Talks segment, “Vitech’s Quality 360 Approach,” click here.

BRENT BLACKMON

Brent Blackmon is a Vice President, Head of Quality at Vitech. He oversees Vitech’s Quality Assurance practice across all customer implementations. He is experienced in all phases of the systems' development and delivery life cycle, software implementation, and post-implementation support, and brings strong analytical, software/hardware design and project management skills to the quality assurance process. Brent partners with customers on both the technical and functional aspects of enterprise software development and implementation, helped pioneer the V3locity automated regression testing (ART) platform, and leverages this to drive Vitech’s quality assurance efforts across the company’s client base.  Brent can be reached by email or on LinkedIn.

Sign Up For Updates

Stay up-to-date on the latest industry news,
digital products and innovations.

    V3locity

    CoreAdmin
    Digital
    ClaimsCenter
    CampaignCenter
    DocCenter
    SalesCenter

    Industries

    Group Insurance
    Annuities & PRT
    Retirement Administration
    Alternative Investments

    Technology

    Services

    News/Events

    News
    Events

    Resources

    Careers

    About

    About Us
    Leadership
    Partners
    Customers
    Contact

    © Vitech Systems Sub LLC 2022. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy. Vitech refers to Vitech Systems Sub LLC and may sometimes refer to VSG Hosting Sub LLC. Vitech Systems Sub LLC is a separate legal entity from VSG Hosting Sub LLC.

    Please fill out this short form:

      Please fill out this short form:

        Please fill out this short form:

          Please fill out this short form:

            Please fill out this short form:

              Please fill out this short form:

                Please fill out this short form:

                  Please fill out this short form:

                    Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Life Insurance Policy Administration Systems, North America, Richard Natale, 5 August 2019.

                    Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.