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Frequently Asked Questions: ERP Automated Testing
ERP Automated Testing
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Frequently Asked Questions: ERP Automated Testing

June 23, 2022
 / 
by 
Sohaib Zaidi

The majority of enterprises using Cloud ERP solutions are struggling to keep pace with the frequency, depth, and breadth of their updates. With vendors like Oracle, SAP, Workday, Kronos, and Veeva rolling out these updates on a more frequent basis, organizations are realizing that manual testing processes can’t keep up. However, a number of misconceptions about ERP automated testing have prevented businesses from adopting test automation.

In this blog, we’ll try to answer some of the most common questions that business owners, IT leaders, and CIOs have in regard to ERP automated testing.

1. Why is software testing crucial for your business?

Since ERP applications are part of your core business processes, it’s vital to test them frequently and ensure these critical workflows don’t break. If bugs carry over into production, they can slow down your company’s efficiency and cost you revenue, reputation, and clients.

A great example of what can go wrong when enterprise software doesn’t work as intended can be seen with Haribo a few years ago, when they migrated 16 of their candy factories in 10 countries to SAP’s S/4HANA ERP software. While the migration was highly anticipated, it wasn’t as smooth or seamless as expected. Almost immediately, issues with the platform caused hiccups in Haribo’s supply chain operations. Production constraints led to missed supermarket deliveries, and by the end of the year, the company experienced a 25% decline in sales.

2. How important is testing to ERP implementation/migration?

If not performed carefully, ERP implementation/migration can be disastrous. Another news-capturing ERP migration failure occurred when Citibank switched from Oracle's Flexcube to Finastra's Loan IQ in 2020. A software bug caused over $900 million to mistakenly be sent to the wrong hedge fund, which resulted in Citibank needing to spend millions on litigation fees.

To avoid costly mistakes like this, your enterprise needs a test-focused strategy that has pre-migration, in-migration, and post-migration testing scenarios. Continuous ERP testing throughout the migration/ implementation process will ensure your data will stay secure, your cloud environment will be properly configured, and your applications run smoothly.

3. How test automation can speed up testing projects?

To understand this, let’s consider a few use cases:

  • User case 1: Cloud Migration – Migration from an on-premise to Cloud ERP is a complex project that requires multiple test cycles, to ensure that legacy business processes continue to work in their new environment. As the ultimate responsibility for testing lies with business users, not the ERP provider or IT department, they need to verify their ERP is functioning correctly. Repetitive testing is time-consuming and can become monotonous for business users, which often results in human error; As such, enterprises can utilize test automation to free their users from the burden of testing during migrations, and increase the overall test quality.
  • Use case 2: ERP Updates – ERP vendors are rolling out updates more frequently than ever. Oracle’s quarterly updates, SAP’s bi-annual updates, Salesforce’s seasonal updates, and more need to be tested prior to each push to production. Manually testing each scenario is extremely time-consuming, but failure to test each critical workflow can expose your business to serious risk. Test automation allows project teams to optimize the tests they run by helping enterprises focus on only their most at-risk processes.

4. How easy is it to set up automated ERP testing?

If you’re looking to build a framework from scratch, it will be costly and time-consuming. Utilizing code-based tools requires technically-trained employees.

Unlike frameworks built from scratch, Opkey platform customers can get up and running in just a few days. Additionally, any employee can create and automate tests with Opkey’s no-code test automation platform—no technical expertise is required.

5. Is automated ERP testing as reliable as manual ERP testing?

Manual testing is error-prone, time-consuming, and costly. Often, test engineers create test cases based solely on their personal experience and educated guesses about what business users are doing. As you can imagine, this unscientific method often leads to inconsistencies and inadequate test coverage.

Intelligent test automation tools like Opkey utilize test and process mining technologies to surface the tests that actually need to be run to ensure risk reduction. And because machines are executing the tests–not humans–they’re far more reliable.

Read our Whitepaper: "Manual Vs Automated Testing - Top Considerations" to know more.

6. Can automated testing tools like Opkey handle a wide range of tests?

Opkey can perform the following types of testing:

  • Functional testing
  • Integration testing
  • API testing
  • Security testing
  • Usability testing
  • Performance testing
  • Load testing
  • Regression testing
  • Parallel testing

7. What are the benefits of automated ERP testing?

  • Reduce test execution time by 50% to 95%.
  • Achieve optimal test coverage by only focusing on the most at-risk business processes.
  • Minimize the time and resources used for testing.
  • Accelerate testing cycles and project delivery.
See the benefits of ERP test automation firsthand, and contact one of our testing experts today.
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