The Beta Testing Campaign Platform for Research Projects

Project Objective

European research projects are expected to deliver results for reuse by other research projects and integration by business users. In both cases, to increase the chance of a tangible impact, research projects must deliver results that are well packaged, easy to understand and easy to use. 

ReachOut addresses this need with a two-prong solution. First, by educating research projects on the methodology and benefits of beta testing and, second, by providing a platform with tools and functional resources to launch beta testing campaigns, recruit beta testers and collect feedback.

The ReachOut concept is summarized as follows: If a project is able to launch a beta-testing campaign of its results, it has what it takes to bring value to the market, engage with other research projects, users, partners and contributors and develop its own ecosystem. By encouraging partners to work together to enhance the market maturity of the product of their research, a beta testing campaign is a best practice to deliver valuable and exploitable results.

A beta testing campaign is a technico-marketing initiative in which, on one hand, provisional software is combined with product attributes such as proper packaging, user interface and documentation so as to make it understandable and easy to use and, on the other, beta testers are recruited and incentivised to provide feedback with the possibility of winning a prize. 

Unlike conventional, usually project-centric support actions, ReachOut is market-oriented. Its aim is to generate actual connections between research projects, third-party research projects and real-life market users.

ReachOut project partners demonstrate solid expertise stemming from their day-to-day business activities and dissemination and support experience gained from a dozen EU-funded projects, including successfully delivering the Ocean Directory of cloud projects, the AppHub marketplace for open source projects and the CHOReVOLUTION beta testing campaign.