As a leading American biotechnology company, innovation is at the core of its mission to develop life-changing medicines. To support its global operations and diverse departments—including research and development, commercial IT, and human resources services—the company relies on a complex ecosystem of more than 35 enterprise applications. These include critical platforms like Workday, Oracle EBS, Veeva Vault, and ServiceNow. Ensuring the quality and reliability of these systems is paramount, especially in a highly regulated GxP environment where patient safety and data integrity are non-negotiable.

Industry: Health and Life Sciences
Organization size: 10,000 employees
Location: USA
Products:
- Tricentis Tosca

Challenges

Establishing a centralized and independent Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) to govern quality across more than 30 projects.
Lack of a scalable automation framework to handle frequent patch testing and upgrades for numerous COTS applications.
Inability to deliver real-time, accurate reporting and metrics across different project domains.
Risk of schedule and effort variances impacting project timelines and budgets.

Before centralizing its quality efforts, the company faced significant hurdles in maintaining software quality and speed. The testing processes were fragmented across various departments, leading to inconsistent standards and reporting. Manual testing was predominant, making it difficult to keep pace with frequent updates to critical applications like Workday and Oracle. This approach was not only slow and resource-intensive but also increased the risk of defects slipping into production, which could have serious compliance implications in the GxP-validated environment. The team knew they needed a unified, automated solution and experienced implementation partner to create a robust TCoE that could scale and support the company’s growth and digital transformation initiatives.

Tricentis provides immediate value with Tricentis Tosca

To build its TCoE, the biotech leader needed a powerful, versatile test automation solution. The company chose Tricentis Tosca for its codeless, model-based approach, which enables teams to quickly automate end-to-end tests across complex application landscapes. Tosca’s ability to handle a wide range of technologies was a perfect fit for the company’s diverse portfolio, which includes everything from web applications like Veeva CRM and ServiceNow to enterprise systems like Oracle EBS, and was expertly delivered by trusted technology partner, Cognizant.

With Cognizant’s tailored approach to Tosca’s implementation within the biotech organization’s quality environment, the team established a robust automation framework that could be leveraged across projects. This move immediately addressed the challenge of testing frequent application patches and upgrades. Instead of performing time-consuming manual regression tests, the team used Tosca to create resilient, reusable automation suites. This ensured that updates to Workday, for instance, didn’t negatively impact downstream processes or integrations. The codeless nature of Tosca also empowered more team members to become automation engineers, with 20% of associates transforming into this role and contributing to the automation effort.

This new, streamlined approach delivered significant results. The company achieved over 40% automation leverage, drastically reducing manual effort and accelerating testing cycles. The ability to run automated tests for functional, regression, UAT support, and patch testing allowed the team to maintain a 0% schedule and effort variance, keeping projects on time and on budget.

Further value unlocked across the enterprise

The implementation of Tosca served as the foundation for the company’s managed testing services model. With a centralized governance structure and a 40-person peak team size, the TCoE began delivering verification and validation testing services across the organization. This standardized process ensured that quality was consistently high, regardless of the project or department, led by thorough and collaborative implementation from Cognizant.

A key benefit was the improvement in reporting and metrics. By integrating Tosca with Jira and Zephyr, the TCoE gained the ability to provide accurate, real-time reporting. This visibility allowed for better tracking of a strong metrics baseline and continuous improvement planning. The results were clear: with nearly 8,900 test cases executed, the team identified approximately 1,090 defects, achieving a remarkable 0% defect leakage into production. This level of quality is critical in a regulated industry and solidified the TCoE’s value to the business.

The financial impact was also substantial. The efficiency gains from Tricentis automation and Cognizant oversight led to over $600,000 in savings, freeing up resources to focus on innovation and strategy.

“Cognizant partnered with a leading U.S. biotechnology company to modernize quality engineering through a Tosca powered Managed Testing Services model. The transformation delivered 80% automation coverage, eliminated production defects, and generated $600K in savings, accelerating releases without compromising compliance,” attests Nirmalkumar Ramachandran, SBU Head, Healthcare & Lifesciences & QE&A at Cognizant.

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