What is ERP Testing? Importance, Phases, & Setup

Supriya Bajaj

Senior Writer

ERP Testing

To get up and operating quickly and increase ROI as soon as possible, you might want to ensure that ERP software is installed correctly and runs smoothly when you first execute it. The question is, how do you do this? Through an ERP test plan.

ERP testing ensures that every module functions and configures according to the organization’s needs. That means ensuring that the implementation has not only gone according to plan but will set your company up for long-term success.

Looking for ERP Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of the best ERP Software solutions.

The first thing new ERP users should remember is that ERP isn’t just software but also a business solution. Therefore, the concerned tool should ensure that the business process is automated and workflow is maintained.

By automating various processes, ERP systems help companies eliminate monotonous and manual data entry work. For instance, a personal record is created for a new employee when he joins the organization.

The HR software solution automatically credits the leaves based on the employee’s salary grade. In addition to salary calculations, employee and manager profiles are created in respective subsystems of payroll.

What is ERP Testing?

An ERP test is a quality assurance (QA) process to ensure your ERP software solution works properly during implementation. This method ensures the ERP system is perfectly executed and working before launching. 

Due to the flexibility of ERP software, companies can customize the rules according to their policies, which requires comprehensive integration testing to ensure that the ERP system is set up according to the company’s needs.

Domain knowledge for software testers

As with any other application software, ERP software testing can be considered in most cases, with the exception that, to test an ERP system properly, one must understand how and where the data flows, as well as which subsystems store the data, which is the most critical aspect of an ERP test plan. ERP domain knowledge is crucial to getting good results.

Why is ERP Testing Important?

Typically, ERP implementation projects fail because of improper test planning and testing. Therefore, testing professionals should understand the variations of ERP systems to understand the importance of ERP software testing.

The same ERP system may be available in different versions for different domains and customers. For example, major ERP vendors provide different versions of their software.

ERP in testing

When you have dozens of stakeholders and end users involved, hundreds of functional requirements, and hundreds of testing types, using an industry-leading test management system is crucial to ensuring a successful ERP testing process.

Test automation systems reduce the administrative burden of testing and rapidly consolidate feedback because they allow testing managers to set up and launch quickly. Track test runs and testers to seamlessly track their work and input.

Planning an ERP Testing Setup

There is no one way to plan an ERP testing setup, as each enterprise resource planning solution has a different business logic and differs in functionality, third-party integrations, and deployment type (on-premises, cloud-based, hybrid-ERP systems). Here are the steps common to ERP testing projects:

  1. ERP Testing Preparation

    Consider the quality-related risks related to ERP testing and develop a risk mitigation plan. Estimate the number of test cases per iteration, reject defects, ERP needs that do not fit into test cases, and the automation rate of trials.

  2. Designing the ERP Testing Process/ Selecting the Vendor

    Suppose you do ERP testing in-house (fully or partially) and plan collaboration scenarios between stakeholders (a PM, development team, QA squad, key ERP users, etc.).

    First, decide whether you will do ERP testing in-house. Then, design the ERP requirements specification in a way suitable for testing (for example, through user stories, acceptance tests, or unit tests).

  3. ERP Testing Launch

    During this stage, the ERP QA team creates, gathers, and prepares test data, prepares the test environment, designs test cases, and develops test scripts. Therefore, it is important for the QA team to regularly report on the progress of ERP software testing once it has been launched. Although software testing services guarantee flawless functionality ERP software, our end-to-end solutions ensure that each feature serves its purpose.

    In addition, the team should collaborate with the development team on improving the granularity and coverage of the test suite.

What are the Types of ERP Testing?

A few methods for testing an ERP are listed below:

Types of ERP testing

  1. Automated Testing

    Automated testing involves automating routine tasks, making them easier and faster by doing them all at once. Therefore, businesses must choose the right automation tools and protect all test procedures for a profitable project.

  2. Functional Testing

    This testing technique tests whether an ERP system can provide the solutions required by a specific organization. This testing technique ensures that all ERP features, including software and hardware, are tested. An evaluation of the test goals and objectives can function as a barometer to determine the effectiveness of the test.

  3. Security Testing

    The ERP in testing solution contains employee and employer data from end to end. For this reason, it is extremely necessary to restrict access to sensitive data to only permitted personnel on a need-to-know basis, thus decreasing the possibility of hacking and data theft.

  4. Performance Testing

    During this testing technique, ERP systems are tested for their ability to perform individualized tasks in demanding environments. Due to ERP’s integration with other systems, it is crucial to assess the performance of ERP in testing in high-demand situations, including high transactions and data flow.

  5. Integration Testing

    During integration testing, the aim is to assess how well the ERP system integrates with your company’s business processes so that you get the results you want.

    It is common for companies to roll out ERP software modules in stages, requiring regression testing after every customized suite or module launch

  6. Regression Testing

    A QA team has to verify every time a code change is made to ensure that already working functionality is not affected and that the system continues to work as expected.

  7. Usability Testing

    Generally, it is divided into transparency, understanding, operability, attractiveness, and compliance. Usability refers to the convenience of our software, which determines how users can easily understand our software, how easy it will be to use, and whether our product will be attractive to users based on specific requirements determined by stakeholders.

What are the Phases Involved in SAP ERP Testing?

ERP test plan can be divided into three phases, as shown below:

Phases of ERP testing

  1. Test Preparation

    Establish the business processes and scope of the testing, the installation of the test system, the preparation of test suites, the creation of test data, and the trial of test cases for manual and automated execution.

  2. Test Execution

    This phase involves testing, reporting, and defect handling.

  3. Test Evaluation

    This phase involves the analysis of test plans, the detection of defects, the assessment of test plans and cases, and the documentation of the process.

How to Make ERP Testing Successful?

Following are some tips to help you make your ERP testing more effective. Understanding the inter-relationships between the modules and subsystems is key to making it more effective.

  1. Invest Time in UAT

    The role of real users in the testing process for ERP products is very important since they are aware of the nitty-gritty of the software and how it interacts with other modules. They are the most suitable individuals to find issues and suggest modifications.

  2. Try as Many Tests as You Can

    No amount of testing is sufficient when it comes to testing ERP solutions. As modules become more complex and data points become interconnected, complexity escalates.

  3. Automate

    marketing automation benefitsAutomation is helpful for most testing activities and especially useful for ERP system testing. Automation is particularly useful in ERP solutions since it allows you to validate functionality and data points after each module is released. Unfortunately, doing this by hand is a very unmanageable and error-prone procedure.

  4. Drive the Execution Professionally

    You can track the project’s implementation and enhancements better if you have a project plan and a project manager, identify your risks, and have a mitigation plan ready.

  5. Follow the Process

    Following the right processes and standards is important when working on an in-house implementation. Don’t make this mistake. Stick to the plan and follow every step judiciously to get the best results.

Pro Tips for Fast and Useful Testing of ERP System

  1. Before implementation, ensure that everything has been tested.
  2. No amount of testing is too much testing. Test the ERP application with as many scenarios as possible.
  3. Be patient with your teams when it comes to production and implementation.
  4. The project must have a designated test manager.

Bottom Line

After implementing the ERP system, business operations become much easier, but ERP testing is more complex and risky compared to any other software/product testing.

Additionally, managing the quality metrics as a “team” in ERP implementation tasks demands a lot of dedication and attention from all stakeholders.

The administration and the consumers must sustain ERP system testing on time and within budget.  Therefore, it is imperative to use the universally proven right processes, methodologies, approaches, and automated ERP testing tools.

The manual data collection and reporting methods will be obsolete once the testing is completed successfully.

Frequently Asked Questions

   

An automated testing tool greatly reduces the time spent testing various business processes in an ERP environment. In addition, test automation enables continuous monitoring of ERP systems, which provides an opportunity to find and fix bugs, thus avoiding costly errors.

It can be quite seamless if you use the right ERP testing tools and partners. As a result of automated testing, you can boost the efficiency of your testing process by leveraging current automation frameworks customized to meet your specific software development lifecycle, managerial structure, and general requirements. By using built-in best practices or automating your recent ERP testing, modern solutions can speed up your ERP system testing.

With ERP performance testing, you can get a clearer picture of how the solution integrates with the various systems it communicates.

Avo Assure & Oracle NetSuite are among the best ERP testing tools.

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