Role of Cloud in your Digital Transformation Journey

In our technology-driven times, organizations that do not have an online presence risks going obsolete or lose credibility. Going digital has become a necessity for enterprises to remain viable, provide good customer experiences, and stay up the competition curve. Since success is generally measured in terms of customer experience, digital transformation becomes a key business requirement. And among the many proven technologies driving digital transformation and offering great customer experiences subsequently is cloud computing. This technology enables enterprises to have robust vision for the future, accelerate digital transformation services, and provide better experiences to the customers.

Businesses have begun to realize the inevitability and benefits of going the cloud way. In a technology-driven world with growing competition, the focus is on garnering transformational benefits rather than settling for the incremental ones. To achieve this, businesses require to set up a robust technology infrastructure. However, for any enterprise digital transformation initiative, the focus should be on remaining flexible and embracing the industry trends.

What is cloud computing?

The process involves the storage, maintenance, management, analytics, processing, and security of data by leveraging a network of internet-based servers. It is in sharp contrast to the data stored on a personal computer or a local server. The distributed storage and management of data help enterprises to make more informed and accurate decisions. Further, this helps them to improve productivity, streamline processes, save costs, innovate, accelerate time to market, enhance customer experiences, and achieve ROI.

Types of cloud computing

The cloud consists of three types of services viz., Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). In SaaS, a third-party cloud provider hosts software applications and delivers them on demand to customers over the World Wide Web. Some examples of SaaS are Google Apps, Dropbox, Salesforce, BigCommerce, MailChimp, Hubspot, and DocuSign, among others.

In PaaS, the third-party provider delivers software and hardware tools, operating environments, database, or computing platforms that are needed to develop applications, over the internet. The examples include Windows Azure, Force.com, Apache Stratos, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and Heroku, among others.

Similarly, in IaaS, a third-party vendor offers access to computing resources viz., storage, data centre space, security, scaling, network components, or servers, among others. The examples include Linode, DigitalOcean, and Rackspace, among others.

How the cloud can play a role in digital business transformation

To disrupt the status quo and stay competitive, enterprises embrace digital transformation services wherein they need to upgrade their legacy IT infrastructure. Also, to enable digital disruption, enterprises, besides streamlining their business processes, need to leverage advanced technologies. These include Augmented Reality, AI and ML, Big Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT), among others. Since these technologies demand heavy computer power and storage space, cloud computing comes as a savior. The benefits to be accrued from cloud during the digital transformation process are as follows:

Flexibility: To ensure the success of any digital transformation strategy, the business processes of enterprises can be changed many times. The cloud allows any organization to save costs by not investing in setting up and maintaining costly IT resources in-house such as software or hardware. This way the organization can remain flexible and agile as it can leverage cloud-based resources based on its requirements. For example, if a project needs greater computing and storage power, the organization can scale up its on-demand cloud requirement by paying an extra amount. The reverse can also hold true leading to the optimization of resources and cost savings.

Security: Any information stored in-house can be vulnerable to situations like security breaches, unexpected system downtime, and natural or man-made disasters. Since all data including backup are contained within a singular IT system, any security-related issue can wipe it clean. On the other hand, cloud hosting can maintain multiple backups of data in a distributed system. So, even if one node gets affected, the data in other nodes can remain unaffected. In cases of big data analysis where big chunks of data are involved, any system failure or security breach can have devastating consequences.

Quick prototyping: Any digital transformation implementation entails continuous innovation, testing, and delivery of products or services. This is where the cloud can help enterprises with platforms to build, test, and deliver/deploy applications bypassing the need for a complex IT architecture. So, if an enterprise builds multiple products, then the cloud platform can allow quick prototyping of such applications, saving cost and time in the process.

Seamless collaboration: Implementing digital transformation solutions would require every stakeholder in the organization to embrace a culture of collaboration. This is congruous to the requirements of DevOps that aim at breaking hierarchies or silos to achieve creativity, quality, innovation, efficiency, and glitch-free delivery. With cloud computing, different teams can work seamlessly in parallel to develop, test, and deliver applications. It allows access to computing resources, anywhere and anytime. Also, the optimal delegation of authority can be assured by controlling the level of user authority.

Cost-effective: Cloud services are highly flexible to user requirements. They offer a scalable model wherein enterprises only pay for services that have been used. Thus, there is no need to set up and maintain a costly IT infrastructure (hardware and software) thereby saving CapEx in the process.

Conclusion

The need to enable digital transformation has become imperative given the cost of setting up and maintaining a robust and functioning IT infrastructure. As business processes become agile with the inclusion of new technologies and the need to uphold greater user experiences, migrating to the cloud environment becomes a necessity. It helps enterprises to bypass the challenges of legacy systems and build-test-deliver quality software applications consistently.

How Test Automation helps Agile to be successful?

To meet the stringent quality requirements of complex applications, the Software Development Life Cycle has changed. If earlier, the waterfall was the preferred model with testing done at the end of development, it has given way to Agile today. This is because the waterfall model suffered from a lot of inconsistencies and did not deliver the right results. Also, it increased the cost of software development and testing for businesses. The need for Agile was felt due to the growing complexity of software applications. As the new software applications come with endpoints that interface with third-party databases, servers, or sites, the quantum of vulnerabilities has increased. If not plugged in time, once these applications are out in the market, they can be exploited by hackers leading to severe consequences for the users.

With Agile, it has become easy to detect glitches and vulnerabilities early on in the software development pipeline. Also, to keep pace with shorter release cycles, enterprises are adopting Agile test automation. This is to ensure the software conforms to the exacting standards of quality. Further, with plenty of features being added to the software in every sprint, developers need to ensure they do not affect the existing functionalities. Also, as the sprint is of a shorter duration, it is not possible to test and execute the entire software suite every time a feature is added. This is where Agile test automation can help by running the codes iteratively.

Why Agile development needs automation?

The Agile model entails the development, testing, and delivery of glitch-free software products within fast turnarounds. Since the process can involve repeated changes, a robust test automation strategy should be put in place. For Agile testers, there are several challenges to be addressed with Agile test automation.

Challenges for Agile testing

Even though adopting an Agile testing framework delivers a string of positive outcomes, it can entail some challenges too. These include

Inadequate test coverage: During the later sprints when a number of features are added to the build, the testers get lesser time to test them and analyze their impact. In such conditions, a few user stories are left untested with the hope that they would not affect the release. However, by automating the Agile application testing process, the build can be put through a regression testing exercise to achieve assured quality.

Frequent build leading to cracked code: In Agile, there can be instances of frequent code changes due to the addition of features to the build. These changes can lead to cracked codes, especially during the integration phase. Further, to implement a continuous integration and deployment pipeline (CI/CD), the Agile testing experts ought to implement test automation.

Performance issues: It can often be the case when improving the functionality of an app can end up complicating it further. Since every change can lead to an increase in the volume of codes, the performance of the app can take a hit. However, conducting Agile performance testing using automation tools can identify the performance issues.

Compatibility issues: Any software of the day should be checked for its compatibility across devices, operating platforms, browsers, and networks. Ideally, testers should ensure the seamless run of software across devices. An automated test run can check for glitches or vulnerabilities in the endpoints and APIs, and make sure the compatibility issues are sorted.

API testing: A web or mobile app involves the implementation of complex APIs, the quality of which is often overlooked. Automation testing tools such as LambdaTest can help Agile testers to overcome such issues.

Things to automate in Agile

When it comes to introducing automation in testing, areas like regression testing or smoke testing take the cake. However, these are just the top layers of the build, which can be insufficient as far as ensuring the quality of the software is concerned. The other areas where test automation can be implemented are

·         Builds and deployments

·         Unit tests

·         Non-functional testing

·         API testing

·         GUI testing

·         Repetitive tasks like data comparisons

Benefits of test automation

Agile development can be benefited from automated testing in a number of ways related to performance, portability, versioning, reliability, usability, and speed, among others. The benefits include

·         Enhanced quality

·         Quick turnaround

·         Repeat execution

·         Seamless performance

·         Better collaboration

Conclusion

The Agile testing approach can lead enterprises to create a better software development pipeline. Its success is underpinned on the level of implementing test automation. The automation-led Agile methodology combined with DevOps has the potential to improve the quality of software and deliver great user experiences.

The right approach for testing the ERP applications

Enterprises are realizing the need to leverage the SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) model to accelerate growth. However, overhauling core processes administered by legacy ERP applications is equally critical. ERP applications help enterprises manage various functions, departments, and processes, including the data generated therein.

These applications help enterprises to run as one single unit and, in the process, generate outcomes such as improved productivity, better efficiency, reduced waste, enhanced customer experience, and increased ROI. In view of the criticality of ERP applications for organizations, they should be tested and validated. Testing ERP applications can ensure the smooth functioning of multiple tasks within organizations. These may include tracking inventory and customer transactions, managing finances and human resources, among many others.

Why is ERP software testing needed?

ERP software is cost-intensive and requires a lot of investment in time and effort. Every ERP software comes with multiple versions and requires customization to suit specific business requisites. Moreover, since every element in the application is connected to some other module, upgrading them can be a challenging task. For example, creating a sales order would need access to the inventory management module. If any of the modules does not function to its optimum, the entire ERP application may be impacted. This can have a cascading effect on the performance of the company as well as create bad customer experiences. Hence, testing ERP applications shall ensure the correct implementation of the software and prevent crashes.

ERP software testing, besides checking the software’s functionalities, should ensure the generation of reports and forms accurately. By identifying and removing bugs during the testing phase, testers can avoid facing post-implementation blues. Moreover, it can lead to an early adoption of software and ensure its smooth running. ERP application testing services validate business processes, functions, and the rules governing them. They help reduce operational risks within the constraints of available resources and time.

Approaching the testing of ERP applications

It is imperative for enterprises to set up a robust testing strategy. The strategy should prioritize the testing of processes depending on the short and long-term goals.

Setting up KPIs: At the outset, testers should setup the KPIs or performance metrics and evaluate how they will impact the overall organizational goal as well as departmental objectives. Thus, establishing the KPIs will help derive the right ROI for the organization.

All-encompassing: ERP implementation for a large organization with many departments and processes can be a complex and challenging job. However, it is important that all stakeholders are taken into confidence and involved in the process. The process also includes making the necessary investment in training. When everyone is involved in ERP implementation, there is more cohesiveness in the administration of the software.

Data migration: An organization can plan its strategic moves if it can make use of its data emanating from various processes over a period of time. To ensure real data is not lost or distorted in any way during ERP validation and testing, its proper migration process should be planned beforehand.

Selecting the right automation tools: As ERP software can have myriad variables interfacing with various processes, they need to be validated. This requires choosing the right test automation tools - open-source or premium ones. Automated ERP testing can validate a large number of variables for various processes against expected outcomes. The right automation tool will help testers to write and execute test cases.

Identifying test cases: Since it is not possible to test every sinew of an ERP application, proper test cases should be written to ensure the maximum test coverage. Thus, testers should identify the test cases for each test and document them as well. Also, since ERP processes are linked to each other, and even to third-party applications or modules, they should undergo automated ERP testing.

Conducting performance, regression, and security tests: As an ERP system helps to run the operations of an enterprise as a single unit, it should run some critical tests. These include regression, performance, integration, security, and usability tests. This way the enterprise can ensure continuous monitoring of the system, save time and cost, and prevent any sudden downtime or latency.

Proper documentation: Post testing of components in the ERP system, the documented glitches ought to be analyzed to preempt any failure in a real environment. Moreover, the reports can be used for future reference.

Conclusion

To sustain in the competitive business environment of today, businesses need to take digital initiatives such as implementing an ERP solution. However, to ensure the successful running of such a solution and derive benefits out of it, enterprises should carry out ERP testing. The approach for such a testing should involve automation and carrying out various types of testing.

What are the main challenges of Mobile Test Automation?

Organizations are releasing mobile apps in quick succession to leverage the growing appetite of tech-savvy customers. However, not every app receives user acceptance owing to a range of issues. These include functional defects, below-par performance, device incompatibility, and poor user experience. As users become more critical of such issues and are deluged with a range of alternatives, mobile application testing has become important. Surprisingly, most organizations are yet to embrace mobile test automation even as they slug it out to release newer variants of apps. So, what challenges do enterprises face when they go about conducting mobile test automation? Let us describe some of the biggest ones:

Biggest challenges for testing mobile applications

The list of challenges bedeviling the mobile test exercise is -

1.      Quick release schedules: With customers rooting for mobile apps in greater numbers, enterprises don’t want to be a late entrant and miss the bus. They go for quick build and release cycles where a thorough round of testing often becomes a casualty. Also, due to the pressing schedules, enterprises neither integrate new tests into their test cycles nor have the time to write test scripts. With DevOps and Agile being the methodologies to develop glitch-free applications, the need has arisen to develop a test suite. The suite should be underpinned on continuous innovation to address the dynamics of a complex mobile environment. However, this makes the test cycle lengthy with the release of new devices, operating systems and their variants, features, and functionalities.

2.      Choosing the right mobile app test automation tool: Every mobile app comes with different test challenges where no two are similar. Although the market is flush with many automation tools, the challenge is to find the right one that addresses the specific test requirement. So, to choose the right mobile application QA testing tool, enterprises should meet certain standards:

·         Ease of use and the ability to create a script

·   Ought to run on native and object web properties for better identification of the components

·         Ability to connect to the cloud

·         Enable more than functional testing

3.      Security: Given its growing ramifications on brand equity and user experience, security testing has become a challenging exercise. The reason being the umpteen vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit to steal data or information. When it comes to the cloud, it is better to rely on a private cloud, for it provides better encryption. Also, preventing data breach on a public cloud platform should be given serious consideration by implementing mobile testing. Further, DevOps should be changed to DevSecOps for better security compliance and accountability across the organization.

4.      Diversity in devices: The mobile ecosystem has numerous mobile devices with different configurations. Such device diversity makes mobile app testing a challenging task, especially for native, hybrid, and web apps. Moreover, the type of testing differs as well vis-a-vis compatibility, performance, stress, conformance, and security. Even though native apps have a limited scope of testing, their hybrid and web counterparts are needed to be tested for on and off platforms. This can create knotty back-end issues. Both native and hybrid apps should be tested on various device platforms to ensure outcomes like quick and seamless download, performance, platform interaction, and updates.

5.      Diversity in OS platforms: One of the most challenging scenarios in mobile test automation is to account for the fast-changing operating systems and their variants. With devices operating on different variants of Android, iOS or Windows operating systems at any point in time, mobile testing can become complicated. These mainly relate to the compatibility issues when apps are deployed across operating environments. However, these can be addressed by following solutions -

·         Putting emulators into use to identify glitches and security issues

·         Testing on a set of popularly used devices and target users.

·   Using a mix of both in-house mobile lab and cloud based mobile QA testing

Conclusion

The widespread usage of mobile apps and their interfaces with myriad thirty party sites have meant vulnerabilities can creep into the system, anytime and anywhere. Also, since a significant number of mobile apps carry critical financial and personal information, they should be guarded against all kinds of cyber threats. A thorough mobile application testing framework can help identify such glitches and deliver great user experiences.

How Healthcare Transformation can evolve in the coming years

The relentless journey of digitalization has touched every sector of the economy, including healthcare. If we look at healthcare as a microcosm then there has been a lot of progress made in the past decades. The development of new medicines and diagnostic tools has revolutionized the sector for the better. This has led to a significant decline in the mortality and morbidity rates globally. Importantly, pestilences like smallpox or plague have become a thing of the past. However, with tremendous progress in various fields, new challenges too seem to have plagued the sector. These include the germination of drug resistant microbes and the gaining prominence of lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and stress, among others. Further, cancer continues to wreak havoc across demographics with a comprehensive cure remaining elusive.

The buzz around healthcare transformation through digitalization has brought in a slew of benefits. This includes managing the burgeoning healthcare sector with AI-enabled medical devices, telemedicine, or blockchain-driven electronic health records. Digitalization in hospitals and nursing homes has brought about a comprehensive improvement in their delivery of services. For example, a computer-based system creates electronic records of patients arriving at the hospital and then manages them seamlessly, right from the admission stage to the eventual discharge. Also, various types of apps tailor-made to monitor the health of individuals have become commonplace.

Medical practitioners have become dependent on the smooth functioning of medical devices to diagnose and treat patients. With so much at stake, glitches in such devices or tools can play havoc with the lives of patients. This is where healthcare app testing should become an integral part of the software development pipeline. Let us understand how healthcare transformation is going to evolve in the coming years.

How digital transformation in healthcare can benefit people

The technology and knowledge intensive healthcare sector has seen end-users using apps to derive benefits like connecting to a doctor, buying medicines, or doing diagnostics tests, among others.

Connecting to the doctor: This can often be a matter of life and death as the right doctor can diagnose an ailment quickly and begin the treatment process. However, customers often lack the wherewithal to evaluate the parameters of a healthcare provider. But with healthcare app testing, patients can use a robust app to make informed decisions about their health. Imagine making an appointment with your doctor for a house call or clinic visit from your smartphone, the same way you would book an Uber cab.

Leveraging big data: Big data can analyze trends or patterns from sets of data received through channels such as online transactions, social media, and eCommerce. These can accrue a number of benefits such as:

·         Low rate of medication errors: After analyzing the patients’ records, the software can identify incongruities in terms of prescriptions and patients’ health. These can alert medical professionals to take corrective measures and offer an effective treatment. The quality of such software can be enhanced through healthcare software testing.

·         Preventive care: A large number of people flock to various departments and add to the already existing pool of patients. Many a time, these people do not require to be there in the first place. Big data analysis can identify such people and prevent them from crowding the wrong department. Thus, healthcare testing services can ensure such software applications with interfaces to big data perform accurately.

·         Accurate staffing: Healthcare facilities can be overwhelmed at times with a large influx of patients. By undertaking big data analysis, healthcare service providers can predict such influx and optimize the allocation of workforce. This way the waiting time for patients at various departments can be reduced drastically.

·         Wearable medical devices: Healthcare application testing can preempt the malfunctioning or inaccuracies of wearable devices, which collect health-related data from patients. The wearable device market is likely to be around $27 billion by 2024 (Source: marketwatch.com). The devices come in the form of heart rate sensors, sweat meters, oximeters, and exercise trackers, among others. These devices offer a personalized healthcare experience to the patients and help insurance companies to rate a patient’s risk for illness.

Conclusion

The healthcare industry is undergoing a tectonic shift in favor of technology. This will lead to better diagnosis and treatment of ailments. Moreover, healthcare apps are helping patients to know more about their diseases and the likely treatment protocols to be followed. Patients draw a lot of information from various apps or websites, which were earlier the exclusive preserve of the medical professionals. Healthcare application testing helps in identifying glitches in the applications and ensure they deliver the right outcomes.

How can IoT Testing be improved with the right framework

With digital technology driving the world and making the lives of people easier than ever before, the quest is for making it more decentralized, distributed, and easy to handle. This is where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes across as a technology of the future. It entails changing the lives of people by taking computing to the physical realm. This may include devices, buildings, vehicles, sensors, electronics, and networks, among others. Even though IoT brings many benefits including increased automation of tasks, running such interconnected devices flawlessly can be a challenge. This is due to the heterogeneity of such devices and their need to display coordinated behavior in real-time. So, let us first understand what IoT is all about?

What is IoT?

Here, physical elements comprising buildings, vehicles, home appliances, and other elements are embedded with software, electronics, and sensors to exchange data and information over the internet. These devices are increasingly adopted by the industry to derive a range of benefits. It may include cost reduction and increased revenue generation through automated operations and improved efficiency. The speed of adoption of such devices is driven by various factors such as increased bandwidth and processing power, a growing pool of tech-savvy consumers, the advent of new analytical tools, and the low cost of sensors. Given the competitive nature of today’s business environment, enterprises are looking to generate greater revenues and deliver better customer experiences.

However, notwithstanding the slew of benefits such devices bring to the consumers, building them in the form of a network remains a challenging and complex activity. Since such devices have interfaces with a lot of digital elements, there can be issues of interoperability, security, scalability, coordination, and conformation. Nevertheless, IoT is on its way to become arguably the biggest opportunity for software development and testing. The IoT ecosystem will have an eclectic amalgamation of products like home appliances, embedded sensors, buildings, vehicles, and actuators, among other things. To enable the smooth functioning of such an ecosystem, IoT testing has become a critical requirement of the industry. If statistics are to be believed, then by 2020, around 30 billion products might become a part of the IoT ecosystem (Source: McKinsey.)

What are the benefits of IoT testing?

The importance of IoT-enabled devices in the digital ecosystem meant these have to be tested rigorously to gain a slew of benefits. These include

·         Making the business future-proof in terms of interoperability, adoption of technologies, scalability, security, and other parameters

·         Delivering the best user experiences across channels through automation

·         Delivering quicker access to the markets using test automation

What are the challenges for testing IoT applications?

The testing of IoT-enabled devices entails many challenges due to the presence of diverse devices and the need for their seamless coordination and collaboration. The other challenges are:

·         Dealing with the diversity of elements comprising the IoT ecosystem

·         Ensuring high security for data transmission

·         Adhering to a slew of IoT protocols viz., CoAP, XMPP, MQTT, and others

·         Achieving quick responsiveness in real-time

·         Support for scalability and interoperability

Developing the right framework for Internet of Things testing

To overcome the challenges associated with IoT device testing, a robust IoT testing framework should be put in place. Although designing such a framework would depend on the configurations of specific IoT devices to be tested, it should have some basic features.

Data Recorders: These can help in validating various IoT-enabled devices vis-a-vis their compatibility across communication layers.

Protocol Simulators: The IoT testing methodology involves working with many protocols. Protocol simulators can facilitate IoT testing when there are multiple interfaces of devices and their end-points.

Building Labs: These can help in simulating real-time experiences and deriving suitable inferences in the process.

Virtualization: Any real-time validation of the highly complex IoT application can be challenging and time-consuming. Thus, to reduce the dependency on a real-time environment, certain testing services or parameters can be virtualized. 

Any IoT testing framework should comprise a series of tests to check various layers and their interaction with each other.

Application layer: Functional testing, compatibility testing, usability and user experience testing, localization testing, and API testing.

Services layer: Interoperability testing, functional testing, and API testing.

Gateway and Network layer: Network compatibility and connectivity testing.

Sensor layer: Functional and security testing

Conclusion

The Internet of Things is going to drive the future and will have an eclectic mix of devices/elements such as datacentre, sensors, applications, and networks. Since a lot would be at stake based on the correct behavior of IoT-enabled devices, the IoT testing approach should be all-encompassing and rigorous. Hence, developing the right framework for testing IoT-enabled devices should be the priority, which in turn can ensure these devices to remain programmable, communicable, and operable across the industry.

What is the importance of ERP testing?

Today’s enterprises are subjected to a lot of pulls and pressures - from the markets, competitors, customers, and stakeholders, among others. They need to be up with the times in terms of technology, processes, and general market trends to meet their productivity and sales targets. However, given their footprints, in many cases, lying across territories, they need to remain connected with their branches, employees, and stakeholders, in real time. This is where an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software can help matters by tying the organization in a single unit.

The ERP software enables an organization to run smoothly by collating all data generated from various units. It helps stakeholders to analyze such data and get insights into the processes and requirements in real time. The insights can further help in formulating and implementing strategies on the ground to remain competitive. An ERP software can have interfaces with various departments within an organization viz., finance, human resources, administration, supply-chain management, and customer relationship management, among others. By streamlining business processes and eliminating manual work, an ERP software suite can help improve productivity and efficiency, enhance the quality and speed of delivery, and achieve ROI.

Since the ERP software can be the virtual lifeline of an organization, its effectiveness needs to be top-notch at any given point in time. This is of utmost importance as any software glitch can bring processes to a standstill by giving erroneous inputs to the respective departments. To ensure smooth functioning of the software system under severe test conditions, ERP testing should be made a routine exercise. Nowadays, enterprises deploy third-party resources to manage various tasks owing to the latter’s core competencies. These resources are accessed (both ways) through the cloud or mobile services. To ensure a smooth progression of such services, businesses should brace themselves for testing ERP solutions. This is in alignment with the objectives of Agile or Lean methodologies. Let us understand in detail as to what an ERP testing exercise can deliver -

Why ERP quality assurance and testing?

For beginners, ERP testing is a QA process to ensure the comprehensive software suite is made fully operational before deployment. It checks various units, features, and functionalities of the software against a set of parameters or metrics. The various tests that are part of the ERP QA include functionality testing, performance testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, and unit testing, among others. So, why do we go for ERP validation in the first place?

Time saving: During ERP implementation, any glitch can derail the functioning of the software or generate erroneous results. To identify such glitches, the testing team needs to unscramble each of the integrated units. This can be hugely time-consuming leading to delays. However, should testing ERP solutions be a part of the SLDC in the Agile format, considerable time can be saved in mitigating glitches.

Early mitigation of glitches: By following a shift-left automated ERP testing process, glitches can be identified quickly. Since both testing and development processes take place in a sprint, identification and mitigation of glitches can be quick.

Data security: One of the biggest issues plaguing the digital ecosystem is data security or the lack of it. Moreover, since an ERP system pools data from disparate sources to a centralized repository, hackers can exploit the data pool. An ERP centre of excellence can leverage the right tools to verify the centralized database. This way, it can secure the database by removing any inherent vulnerabilities.

Improved productivity: An operational ERP software can identify the operational needs and verify the presence of inventories. It can ensure the proper deployment of resources, thereby saving time and cost. Also, automated testing can get around the slow response times of manual testing and improve productivity.

Achieves ROI: An efficient ERP system can deliver suitable outcomes within tight turnarounds thereby saving time and cost for the organization. Moreover, by streamlining processes, breaking silos, and attending to customer feedback promptly, the organization can deliver better user experiences. A happy end-customer will generate better sales and enhance brand equity through word-of-mouth. This leads to better ROI for the organization.

Conclusion

Testing of ERP applications entails the validation of their performance, functionality, user acceptability, and security. Its absence can have serious implications for the business processes, configuration, interfaces, or security of an organization. A robust ERP testing exercise can help an organization to meet its business objectives by optimizing costs.

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