UK manufacturers are bracing for costly software failures as pressure to accelerate digital delivery exposes quality gaps, according to Tricentis’ 2025 Quality Transformation Report.
Six in 10 respondents said they expect a major software outage within the next 12 months, with poor software quality costing the sector among the highest amounts worldwide, second only to the USA.
Tricentis said eight in 10 firms reported annual costs of at least £390,000 linked to software quality issues.
More than half (53%) estimated losses between £390,000 and £773,000 a year, while almost a third (30%) put the figure above £773,000.
Impacts extended beyond lost revenue to include customer churn (37%), rising technical debt and maintenance costs (35%) and more frequent security or compliance failures (29%).
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With 42% prioritising faster development and deployment, manufacturers cited time pressure (35%), misalignment between development and IT teams (23%) and unclear directives from senior leadership (20%) as the biggest barriers to maintaining quality.
As a result, testing is often compromised: 72% admit to releasing untested code – almost half of those unintentionally – and 81% have delayed releases due to low confidence in test coverage. One in five said they do not know what to test.
“The automotive and wider manufacturing sectors are now deeply dependent on software to power automated and digitised operations,” said Andrew Power, head of UK and Ireland at Tricentis.
“Manufacturers can’t afford to treat testing as a final checkpoint. While confidence in AI and automation is growing, lasting transformation only happens when quality is built in from design to deployment.”
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Tricentis reported that 95% plan to expand AI in quality assurance over the next year and all UK respondents believed autonomous testing will transform QA, with expected benefits including improved software quality (31%) and faster releases (30%).
Four in five said they are positive about AI agent automation for repetitive tasks, and 66% are very confident in AI making autonomous release decisions.
However, only 58% strongly agree they have sufficient guardrails in place, indicating a governance and trust gap.
The findings are based on a global survey of more than 2,700 CIOs, engineering leaders, QA leads and DevOps practitioners across 10 countries and five sectors.
This includes 539 respondents from manufacturing globally, with 139 in the UK.
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