Quality Across The Business

At first, working as a Marketer for a company where quality is the main priority was tricky. We take brand guidelines very seriously, and every sentence was scrutinised, and on occasions, it felt like expressions of creative flair could have been stifled if I was to be tempted to step beyond the norm. But I’ve learnt to embrace it. Roq’s persistent strive for quality comes from the best intentions, we want everything to be excellent. From the clients we work for, and our colleagues we work with, to the consumers of our content and the attendees of our events.

So clearly, Quality Engineering (QE) isn’t just about ‘software testing’, it’s something much more. It’s about thinking of quality through the entire Software Delivery Lifecycle (SDLC), and more than that, every walk of life and touchpoint for your customers/consumers.

Quality Engineering like no other, delivered by people who care to people that care

Quality Engineering like no other, delivered by people who care to people that care. It’s our mantra, and something we live by throughout the business. From the people in finance, to our delivery team, to people like me in the Marketing team, and the entire business – we care about what we do and want to make sure every piece of work is as good as it can be, and does exactly what it should.

Quality for all

This has been reflected in a recent article from one of my colleagues, who wrote about our Quality Engineering Ecosystem Masterclass which was designed to upskill all our colleagues in Roq’s Quality Engineering Ecosystem and its five main principles. First of all, all Roq colleagues were encouraged to take this training and a follow up assessment (which EVERYONE passed). And secondly, it was clear from the sessions that these principles – of which you can read more about in the aforementioned article – are so important all across the business, as many of my colleagues from our Business Support functions really got involved in the sessions and gave great examples of how quality applies to their roles outside of Delivery.

What does the SDLC look like in marketing?

And to show just how well these Quality principles can align to any working process, here’s how the SDLC looks in a day in the life of me, a marketer.

Inception – any piece of content, campaign or event is only as good as the brief you’re given. As discussed in this article from Campaign Magazine – ‘Behind every masterpiece there lies a good brief’. What needs to be achieved?  What will the KPIs be? What do you want the consumer to feel/do?

Design – What media will work best?  Aesthetically, what will attract views? Will people ‘experience the brand’ from what you’re creating?  Is the copy reflecting the messaging accurately etc?

Build – Awesome creative work, whether it’s event organisation, copywriting, video creation or design… Organised legwork!

Validate – AB testing on websites, trial campaigns to certain audiences before wider launch etc. Approvals from stakeholders, buy-in from peers etc.

Deploy & Maintain – Launch and reap the rewards, but also, using reports, analytics etc. to understand how well it’s working, to enable you to make tweaks and changes if needed. Again, applying one of our Quality Engineering principles, ‘continuous improvement’.

Apply these principles to any process, and you’re on to a winner. Trust me.

Quality Values

Other principles we live our lives by at Roq are those of our core values, which for me each tie nicely in to our consistent push for quality.

Excellence – This is what it says on the tin, we want each and every piece of work we engage with to be excellent, the very best it can be.

Straight Talking – This feeds in to what I mentioned earlier in this article, we’re quite a picky bunch and any little mistakes will be questioned. There’s not necessarily a wrong way of doing something, but we’re not afraid to call out when we think something could be better, and this really helps us in that push for true quality.

Passionate – We care about what we do. Not just in our client work, but in how we treat our peers, the events we engage in for charity initiatives, and beyond.

Commitment – We see things through. And if something isn’t as good as it could be, we don’t stop ‘til we get there.

A consistent push for quality

To me, quality is subjective. It’s defined by what you’re trying to achieve and could be seen differently from person to person. In my opinion, it’s all about doing your best. And at Roq, I think we do that perfectly. That consistent push for quality that I’ve already mentioned a few times in this article, never accepting that anything is good enough, it’s what makes us great to work with, and great to work for.

Always happy to have a chat about anything discussed in this article, or not in this article – feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you’d like to discuss quality, marketing, content, design, values, football, film or just about anything.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to talk to me… you could always reach out to another member of the Roq team to discuss how we can support your business – ask@roq.co.uk