Connecting Vietnam–Japan Through Test Automation: How VNEXT Used MagicPod to Eliminate Knowledge Silos and Raise Quality in Offshore Development

VNEXT HOLDINGS JOINT STOCK COMPANY

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We spoke with VNEXT HOLDINGS about what led them to choose MagicPod, and how they have been using it from implementation through to today. The conversation was led by Nozomi Ito, CEO of MagicPod.

VNEXT HOLDINGS JOINT STOCK COMPANY

With contract software development for the Japanese market as its core business, VNEXT operates as a comprehensive IT services company across Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and the Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Da Nang. Since 2016, the company has also established group subsidiaries specializing in advanced technologies such as AI and blockchain, continuing to deliver high-quality, flexible development services.

KEY POINTS

  • Before automation, quality varied depending on who ran the tests, and providing evidence-based reports to clients was a persistent challenge
  • With no-code, even manual testers were able to get up to speed on automation within one to two weeks
  • Regression testing that previously took two to three days has been cut to under half a day, with productivity gains across the board
  • Fully cloud-based with no environment setup required — overnight automated execution leveraging the time difference has become standard practice
  • Screenshots serve as audit trails, enabling a shift to reviewing results together with clients
Counterclockwise from top left: ● Mai — Sales Team Leader ● Men — Test Leader ● Tam — Test Leader ● Nozomi Ito — MagicPod CEO

Counterclockwise from top left:
● Mai — Sales Team Leader
● Men — Test Leader
● Tam — Test Leader
● Nozomi Ito — MagicPod CEO

VNEXT: My name is Mai, and I lead the Sales team. Joining me today from the team that uses MagicPod are our Test Leaders, Tam and Men. Both of them can read and write Japanese, but speaking is a bit of a challenge, so I will be speaking on behalf of the group today.

Ito: Thank you. This is actually the first time we have had the chance to hear from a customer using MagicPod outside of Japan, and I have been looking forward to it. To start, could you give us a brief introduction to VNEXT?

VNEXT: We have been operating for 18 years since our founding in 2008, delivering high-quality, fast-turnaround development through an offshore model that combines resources in Japan and Vietnam. Today, our group totals approximately 565 people — 65 in Japan and around 500 in Vietnam — with a track record of over 400 clients and more than 800 projects completed.

One distinctive feature of our organization is that rather than having developers handle their own testing end-to-end, we maintain a dedicated, independent test team responsible for quality assurance. Our view is that when developers test their own code, the focus tends to stay on logical correctness, which can make it easy to miss things like subtle UI rendering issues.

We serve a broad range of industries; manufacturing, logistics, retail, services — handling everything from small-scale operational improvements to large-scale core system development. In recent years, we have also been investing heavily in AI, incorporating it into our own development processes to improve efficiency and optimize costs.

Challenges Before Implementing MagicPod

VNEXT: The biggest challenge in offshore development is ensuring that test quality does not depend on any one individual's skills or experience. As projects scaled, we needed a system that would allow tests to be executed to the same standard regardless of who was running them. When we were relying on manual testing, quality varied depending on who performed the work, and as a result, it was often difficult to give clients clear, evidence-based answers when they asked what justified our quality assessments.

Ito: So the motivation for exploring automation tools was to eliminate that knowledge dependency?

VNEXT: Exactly. And many of our testers on the Vietnam side are not able to write code. That made tools like Selenium or Appium — which require coding skills as a baseline — too costly to onboard, and rolling them out across the whole team was not realistic. When only a limited number of people can use a tool, the knowledge-silo problem simply resurfaces in a different form. On top of that, the complexity of environment setup and maintenance is a significant barrier in a remote, offshore context. What we needed was an automation framework that anyone could use and anyone could understand.

Why VNEXT Chose MagicPod

VNEXT: The trigger for full-scale adoption was a request from a Japanese client at the end of 2022, when test automation was included as a project requirement. In fact, we had already been researching MagicPod since around 2021 and had been using it internally on a trial basis — we had been looking into it ahead of time to prepare for recommending it to clients, so the timing aligned well.

In response to the client requirement, we conducted a fresh comparison of multiple tools. The three criteria we prioritized were: whether non-coders could use it, whether environment setup burden was minimal, and whether it could standardize quality management across the whole team. MagicPod came out on top, we proposed it to the client, received approval, and moved to full-scale deployment in April 2023.

Ito: There are a few other well-established automation tools out there — do you work with those as well?

VNEXT: We do recommend MagicPod to clients based on their needs, but depending on the project, another tool may end up being selected. The split is roughly fifty-fifty. The team currently using MagicPod has about 20 people.

Ito: What was your first impression once you actually started using it?

VNEXT: The first thing I would highlight is how easy it is to maintain. In test automation, the long-term cost of upkeep often becomes a bigger challenge than the initial test case creation — but with MagicPod, you are unlikely to end up in a situation where automation becomes self-defeating because maintenance consumes all your time.

There is always some turnover on the Vietnam team, but the fact that new members can quickly understand and modify tests built by their predecessors is enormously valuable in day-to-day operations.

How VNEXT Uses MagicPod

Ito: How do you train new members to get up and running with MagicPod?

VNEXT: MagicPod is not particularly difficult to learn. For someone who already has manual testing experience, one to two weeks of hands-on training is enough to get them productive. With automation tools that require code, it can take anywhere from six months to a year to reach proficiency, but MagicPod is no-code and intuitive to operate. The time it takes for new members to understand and start modifying test cases has been dramatically reduced compared to our previous Selenium environment.

Ito: What kinds of results have you seen in actual operations?

VNEXT: We are primarily using MagicPod for E2E test automation across web applications and mobile apps, with regression testing integrated into the CI/CD pipeline and running on a nightly schedule. This has increased our testing frequency from once or twice a week, leading to earlier defect detection, and has cut the testing period per release from two to three days down to under half a day.

We have two teams: a manual testing team and an automation testing team — and the automation team's effective use of MagicPod has indirectly boosted the manual team's productivity and reduced their man-hours as well. For example, work that previously took the manual team 10 hours now takes around 8 hours, a roughly 20% reduction. The freed-up capacity is being reinvested in improving test design quality and covering the next set of features.

For our scheduled execution, a workflow that makes good use of the two-hour time difference between Japan and Vietnam has become standard practice. If the Vietnam team sets the tests running at the end of their workday, all results are ready by the next morning. MagicPod has a setting that allows tests to run to completion even when errors are encountered, rather than stopping mid-way, which has been a real help.

This means the Vietnam team can review errors and defects in advance, and be ready to report and consult with the Japanese client smoothly as soon as they arrive at the office. In a remote environment, we have effectively achieved around-the-clock QA coverage without any additional cost.

Ito: You have really built an efficient cycle by making good use of the time difference. On the other hand, working across Japan and Vietnam must come with some infrastructure challenges — did you experience any friction around remote environment setup or access?

VNEXT: None at all. Because MagicPod is cloud-based, everything runs in the browser without any dependency on VPNs or remote desktops. Both Vietnam and Japan access the same environment, so there are no issues caused by environment discrepancies. When a new member joins, all it takes is creating an account — they can start working in the same environment immediately. That is a significant advantage in an offshore setting.

Ito: Now that you have eliminated those environment discrepancies, has anything changed in how you communicate with your Japanese clients?

VNEXT: The biggest change is that test results have become something we can actually show. In a traditional remote environment, the only option was to report test progress in text, and it was often difficult to convey precisely to clients what had been checked and to what extent.

With MagicPod, each step's execution screen is automatically saved as a screenshot, so the test results themselves become the audit trail. Instead of asking clients to "read a report," the dynamic has shifted to "reviewing results together."

Follow-up questions about test reports have become almost nonexistent, and the time we used to spend on explanations can now go toward more meaningful discussions about quality improvement. Our clients have spoken highly of the team, and we believe MagicPod is one of the key factors behind that.

Ito: I am really glad to hear it is contributing to quality improvements. I understand that one aspect that works particularly well in your offshore context is the fact that MagicPod's Help Center is available in English. How has that been?

VNEXT: Our test engineers are primarily people who can communicate in Japanese for business purposes, but when issues arise, we are seeing more cases where engineers can resolve them directly by consulting the English Help documentation, without needing to go through a Japanese-speaking intermediary. That has reduced communication bottlenecks and improved our response speed.

What the Offshore Team Expects: AI-Powered Acceleration of Test Design

Ito: I understand there is also interest from your team in MagicPod Autopilot — how much are you currently using it in practice?

VNEXT: On our team's side, we are still in the research phase — it is mainly our clients who are using that feature at the moment. That said, we see enormous potential in it as an offshore team. The ability to create and edit test cases in natural language is something we want to actively explore and expand our use of.

We currently run tests in Japanese, but if we could simply give instructions in English and have the steps generated automatically, we expect test design speed to increase significantly. Our teams on the ground are genuinely excited to see how this can help solve the challenge of leveraging generative AI to improve productivity.

May I ask a question? Is MagicPod's development currently handled mainly by engineers on the Japan side?

Ito: Yes, all development is done in-house in Japan. We have around 20 engineers, but recently we have been seeing more internationally-sourced members joining; people living in Japan who are originally from the US, India, Hong Kong, and elsewhere.

VNEXT: I see. So alongside expanding the tool globally, you are also building out a globally diverse team regardless of nationality. That is impressive.

Ito: Yes, gradually but steadily; we want to grow both our hiring and our sales on a global scale.

Closing

VNEXT: Implementing a test automation tool tends to be framed as an engineering challenge, but in practice it is also an organizational challenge — a question of how to get the whole team moving together. No matter how good a tool is, if only certain members can use it, you end up right back at the same knowledge-dependency problem you started with.

The biggest reason we are genuinely glad we chose MagicPod is that the entire team can now approach testing with the same tool and the same standard. Being no-code is not just about being "easy to use" — it means being "usable by everyone." In a team with the diverse backgrounds typical of an offshore environment, that distinction carries enormous weight.

Test automation does not deliver its value the moment you implement it. It has to take root in the team and keep running every day before the real impact becomes visible. MagicPod has firmly met our expectations as a tool that supports that process of embedding automation into how a team actually works. Our experience is that starting small, building confidence, and expanding from there is the surest path to success.


VNEXT HOLDINGS JOINT STOCK COMPANY

VNEXT HOLDINGS JOINT STOCK COMPANY