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How To Create a Robust SAP Testing Strategy?

Sap Testing
Posted On: 1 May 2023

For businesses looking to re-invent their digital strategy, SAP testing is something they cannot afford to ignore moving forward.

By 2026, the ERP market size is estimated to reach nearly USD 71.63 billion globally. The German giant SAP will undoubtedly be one of the biggest names in the ERP market. With a range of digital applications and accelerators available under its stable for the ERP domain, SAP will be a dominant name that customers would prefer when setting out to create a powerful digital backbone for their business. Furthermore, the implementation of SAP products spans across cloud and traditional on-premises environments. Therefore, companies need to have a clear idea of SAP testing and ensure the best results from SAP test automation.

What is SAP testing?

From the name itself, it is easy to imply the meaning of SAP testing. But, to elaborate, SAP testing deals with the set of practices and activities involved in assuring the optimal performance of SAPs’ digital products within a business.

SAP testing primarily deals with testing for the effectiveness of the SAP ERP solution that businesses leverage to manage their end-to-end operations. It is like any other digital application testing initiative from a broader perspective. But the key difference is that this testing involves covering a large plethora of functions supported by business systems from SAP.

ERP systems are often the core brain of an organization, having a widespread influence on the daily operational schedules of different departments. Running a testing initiative for such a large enterprise application requires test engineers and developers to widen their scope of test coverage significantly. The larger the data set, the more significant number of test cases, unique workflows and technology behaviors, the bigger scope for end-user acceptance testing, etc. are just some of the main highlights of SAP testing that businesses must keep in mind.

Why is it important to have a strategic SAP testing approach?

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SAP’s products handle critical roles within a business ecosystem, enabling seamless transactions to revenue accounting and logistical planning.. As a result, any letdowns in service quality or mistakes in live systems can jeopardize the business’s core functions and disrupt business workflows for a long duration. This can prove to be disastrous for the business as a lack of key systems availability will affect customer experience and ultimately ruin the business’s reputation.

If enterprise leaders still have the question of “why is it important to have a strategic SAP testing approach?” in their minds, they need to look at some numbers that SAP has captured regarding market share.

SAP holds over 53.3% of the global market share for procurement software. However, they have nearly 3.6% of the worldwide tally from an ERP perspective.

These figures are a clear indicator of how different businesses recognize the importance of SAP’s business systems in their digital journey. As a result, there is a need for any critical digital application to have a streamlined and strategic testing approach in place. With SAP, this requirement is further aggravated due to the many functional areas that different SAP software will help an enterprise manage.

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Why should enterprises focus on SAP test automation?

We have already covered the larger scope of influence that SAP business systems can have in an organization. So, while deploying testing initiatives, it will be nearly impossible to have the entire digital transformation journey via SAP tested manually. There will be a lot of areas where the speed of testing plays a key role. Also, any biased decision-making based on testing activities needs to be eliminated at all costs to ensure that enterprises can leverage their SAP ecosystem for sustainable growth.

One of the best ways to bring about a paradigm shift in the way testing happens for SAP implementations is to foster the concept of SAP test automation. In principle, SAP test automation deals with leveraging automation tools and platforms, along with best practices, to enable a seamless and automated testing experience for digital systems. Through SAP test automation, it becomes possible for development and testing teams to verify and validate customizations and new feature development initiatives quickly. These scenarios wouldn’t have been captured during manual testing efforts.

What are the benefits of using SAP testing tools?

To accelerate automated testing, it is advisable to empower testing initiatives with SAP testing tools. These specialized platforms know how different workflows and operational schedules are planned within an organization. This allows such tools to be a critical element in test planning activities. Besides, the use of SAP testing tools also reduces the manual effort that would have been required in the eventuality of having to test and validate a large business system, as in the case of an ERP implementation.

Types of Testing Applicable to SAP applications

As complex and critical for business processes, SAP applications require thorough testing to ensure their reliability and functionality. Here are the key types of testing applicable to SAP applications:

1. Functional Testing

  • Validates the SAP application’s functionality against defined business requirements.
  • Tests individual SAP modules, transactions, and processes to ensure proper execution and expected outcomes.

2. Integration Testing:

  • Verifies the seamless integration of SAP applications with other systems, interfaces, or external components.
  • Tests data exchange, communication protocols, and end-to-end business processes across integrated systems.

3. Performance Testing:

  • Evaluates the performance of SAP applications under different loads, stresses, and scalability scenarios.
  • Measures response times, throughput, and resource utilization to ensure optimal system performance.

4. Security Testing:

  • Assesses the security measures implemented within SAP applications to protect sensitive data and prevent unauthorized access.
  • Tests user access controls, encryption, authentication, and vulnerability assessments.

5. Regression Testing:

  • Validates that changes or enhancements made to SAP applications do not negatively impact existing functionalities.
  • Re-executes selected test cases to ensure the stability of the system after modifications or upgrades.

6. User Acceptance Testing (UAT):

  • Involves end-users testing SAP applications in a simulated production-like environment.
  • Verifies that the system meets user requirements and expectations, ensuring user satisfaction and usability.

7. Data Migration Testing:

  • Ensures the accuracy and integrity of data transferred from legacy systems to SAP applications during migration.
  • Verifies the mapping, transformation, validation, and completeness of migrated data.

8. Regression Testing:

  • Validates that changes or enhancements made to SAP applications do not negatively impact existing functionalities.
  • Re-executes selected test cases to ensure the stability of the system after modifications or upgrades.

By incorporating these testing types into the SAP application development and maintenance lifecycle, organizations can mitigate risks, improve quality, and enhance the overall reliability and performance of their SAP systems.

How to build a competitive advantage with SAP testing

We have seen how SAP testing systems can be a critical component of growth for businesses of all sizes. From reshaping their internal collaboration to empowering new dimensions of engagement for customers, the landscape of implementation for SAP’s products is very vast. SAP automation testing can transform into a competitive advantage for businesses as these enterprises are entitled to glitch-free business processing and transactional systems. To ensure that the advantage stays, it is crucial to ensure that the applications delivered for customers fulfill their mission or even exceed their expectations.

In the future, having a SAP testing strategy would become a norm in the enterprise application market worldwide. It will ensure that such critical business systems are continuously monitored for any performance drops, and any remedial measures are taken even faster.

Get in touch with us to know more about creating a SAP testing strategy that resonates with your business’s digital ambitions and ensures seamless onboarding of the latest innovative systems over time.

   

Geosley Andrades

Director, Product Evangelist at ACCELQ.

Geosley is a Test Automation Evangelist and Community builder at ACCELQ. Being passionate about continuous learning, Geosley helps ACCELQ with innovative solutions to transform test automation to be simpler, more reliable, and sustainable for the real world.

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