Think beyond scripting to maximize the automation advantage for SAP Testing

By Anant Hariharan, Associate Vice President – Platform, Cloud & Advisory Services, Market Head at Cognizant

Migrating to SAP® S/4HANA is significantly different from earlier SAP® migrations. SAP® S/4HANA implementation is based on the SAP Activate methodology, which builds on an agile implementation model that requires a strategic approach to test automation. As modern enterprises undertake the S/4HANA journey, test automation should be efficient and effective for a defect-free implementation while improving speed to market. Here, intelligent automation and continuous testing play a crucial role.

As highlighted in the Tricentis SAP® Testing Manifesto, automating the testing of SAP® S/4HANA is table stakes. It can be accentuated by a machine learning-based intelligent automation approach to capturing workflows during functional testing and establishing an automation framework early in the lifecycle. An effective automation strategy focuses on incremental SAP® updates and high-risk features (rather than testing the full system) to release with confidence. As incremental SAP® S/4HANA transports happen, continuous testing should trigger execution of relevant tests in the pipeline.

Case in point

A leading German manufacturing company aimed to achieve more excellent supply chain operational efficiency with a greenfield SAP® S/4HANA implementation. The business had over 600 business processes and 15-plus critical systems involved. Hence, an automation first-approach for quality assurance was inevitable for an error-free implementation.

Cognizant developed an automation framework for the SAP® landscape, generating a reusable and low-maintenance SAP test suite to accelerate testing for that German manufacturing company. Using Tricentis Tosca, Cognizant automated QA for SAP® business processes covering Web, API, ECC, Ariba, and S/4HANA systems. This led the customer to go-live without any critical defects in production, and a 30% reduction in testing effort with higher test automation reusability across releases.

A comprehensive QA strategy

As point 6 of the SAP Testing Manifesto states, functional test automation is essential but—on its own—not sufficient. Continuous automated testing can be highly-successful when coupled with insights on standard business processes and their failures gathered from past data. Tools such as Tricentis LiveCompare can help glean such information to help the continuous testing framework prioritize the test cases. This can enable much earlier defect detection and help avoid costly rework.

73% of SAP® customers plan to deploy S/4HANA*, which will unlock new business capabilities, generate new revenue opportunities, increase cash flows and productivity, improve ROI and elevate customer satisfaction. Enterprises need a comprehensive quality assurance (QA) strategy—crafted from the get-go—to catapult SAP® S/4HANA from “interesting set of technological capabilities” to “fully-functioning ERP environment” status.

Given its advanced capabilities (i.e., its in-memory database), S/4HANA has been challenging and time-consuming to deploy. Continuous testing coupled with intelligent automation is vital to speed up testing within each sprint and ultimately reduce testing cycles.

Watch this short video to learn more about how the Cognizant Tricentis partnership enables faster and risk-free SAP® S/4HANA modernization.

 

*Source: SAP News