Tricentis SAP testing solutions deliver 334% ROI, according to new Forrester Consulting research

In 2020 we answered the demand for automated testing across mission-critical SAP applications with the launch of Tricentis SAP testing solutions; today we can evidence the business impact of their adoption at scale. Commissioned by SAP and Tricentis, new Forrester consulting research has quantified a 334% return on investment (ROI) over three years, with payback in less than six months.

The report, “The Total Economic Impact of SAP Application Testing Solutions By Tricentis,” aggregates insights from interviews with leading global enterprises who use the Tricentis portfolio to test complex SAP landscapes, and who are in the process of migrating their on-premises SAP deployments to S/4HANA. By modernizing their approach to testing, these customers significantly reduced testing efforts and production errors, enabling them to deliver SAP releases three times faster.

A principal ERP test manager who was interviewed for the report summed it up this way: “When you put it all together, the benefits are really clear: fewer test conditions, less effort, less errors.”

By the numbers: Faster, lower-risk SAP releases

The report highlights Tricentis and SAP customers’ significant improvements in KPIs across the delivery lifecycle, including:

• 67% reduction in application time-to-release
• 78% reduction in production errors
• 84% reduction in test scopes
• 12.5x to 25x increase in performance testing frequency
• 99% reduction in performance test maintenance costs
• 90% reduction in hypercare costs

A look at these enterprises’ testing landscapes before they implemented Tricentis solutions offers a lens into a problematic yet common baseline — half were manually testing all SAP applications, and the other half struggled to scale test automation with prior testing tools, which were limited by an inability to assess risk coverage and lack of integration with SAP. It’s no surprise, then, that understanding what to test based on relative risk was cited as a key driver in the decision to modernize the SAP testing toolstack.

Another key driver was the ability to complete the testing required for S/4HANA migration faster and with lower costs — on a significant scale. According to one respondent, test automation was critical to this massive project’s success. “Our SAP implementation is one of the five biggest single-instance SAP implementations in the world. With more than 100,000 users in SAP, our migration to S/4HANA was a big deal. We covered more than 50,000 test conditions; automation was really key for us. We didn’t have the resources to complete this manually.”

Industry disruption and employee satisfaction emerge as distinct advantages

Outside of the numbers, the research sheds light on a handful of capabilities which gave enterprises a competitive edge. This includes standing out in their respective industries, a finding consistent across our research pool in the areas of IT services, utilities, agriculture, and telecommunications. Interviewees reported that improving testing helped their organizations develop new business models faster and more easily than was previously possible.

This heightened efficiency goes hand-in-hand with improved employee satisfaction. The report reflects that ”By reducing the number of incidents that made it into production, SAP application testing solutions by Tricentis had a positive impact on the work lives of employees, easing the frustration of end users of applications and reducing the workload for testing teams managing hypercare.”

Another bonus of fewer errors in production — an impressive 78% reduction overall — is undeniably the significant decrease in hypercare costs, averaging at 90%.

A closer look at three Tricentis SAP testing solutions

SAP Change Impact Analysis by Tricentis, also known as Tricentis LiveCompare, helped interviewees’ organizations reduce the costs of both pre-release testing and hypercare once applications were in production. According to one study participant, “Using Change Impact Analysis was the only way we could get approval to accelerate our release schedule, by proving we could do so while maintaining application quality.”

SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis, also known as Tricentis Tosca, was highlighted by participants as critical to increasing testing speed. Respondents reported an average of 300% faster delivery of SAP application updates. At the high end, one test manager was able to deliver updates four times faster by automating core SAP test cases.

With SAP Performance Enterprise Performance Testing, also known as Tricentis NeoLoad, the same test manager was able to reduce the manpower required for performance testing, which previously took 80 person-days. “This has completely disappeared,” the test manager said.

Keen to know more? Check out the full report and register for the webinar on Feb. 2.