‘Quality control methods’ are a set of techniques used throughout all phases of a business to ensure products and/or services meet or exceed customer/client requirements. Quality control techniques such as QA testing generally imply extensive usage of statistical methods and are vital for all types of businesses. In fact, even if the concept was originally used within engineering and/or manufacturing types of contexts—where actual tangible products are being built—quality control and quality assurance are fundamental tools also for online businesses and eCommerce digital platforms alike, as well as, for service providers who are expected to deliver quality within a set of deliverables, such as netamorphosis.
QUALITY ASSURANCE vs QUALITY CONTROL (QC vs QA)
QA is process specific and more overarching: it defines a set of activities that ensures quality in the processes by which products are developed and ultimately delivered to the market.
QC conversely focuses on products, and ensures quality within them: all actions under QC would therefore focus on identifying defects in each of the actual single products that are being produced.
What is QA at neta? QA is a way of preventing mistakes or defects, when delivering digital solutions and platform services to customers. QA is applied in a pre-production environment to verify software, such as eCommerce platforms, to confirm that they function in meeting business requirements and ensure that code is bug-free prior to greenlighting a push to the go-live (or to the production environment).
Given the complexity of an eCommerce platforming, ultimately the integration of many different plug-in software systems (i.e. analytics packages, order management systems, social media plugins, shipping vendors, payment processors, merchant banks, affiliate marketing, etc.) upholds a systematic measurement, prioritization and comparison with standard, streamlined technical ‘communication and data processes’ that are thoroughly tested to ultimately create a feedback loop with our development or programming partners. Which is also what, in our experience, ultimately strengthens error/bug prevention when we are in a post-launch reality.
On the other hand, QC (quality control) supports every single thing that a team member at neta does. From time entry to client communications, to technical validation, to design verification, to first time feature or functionality development. Our philosophy is that quality comes first, that collaboration is key and that the review of many (i.e. a production line) strengthens the quality of our outputs or deliverables more than what a singular effort would do.
Simply put, quality management and quality check are constant elements throughout neta’s entire a-to-z suite of services, and are ultimately what allow us to help our clients maximize their digital footprint and to achieve their greatest business potential today.