A few years back, only large-scale manufacturing companies used ERP systems to maintain their business processes with the utmost ease. But today, from startups, mid-scale firms to large-scale organizations, everyone today wants a business management software or an ERP software because it allows companies to use a set of integrated applications to simplify and automate their processes or back-office functions related to technology, services, and human resources.
ERP provides full insight into key business processes and helps optimize systems to improve the process of data exchange, database management, and resource monitoring and reporting.
Must-Know ERP Statistics
- The worldwide ERP software market was valued at $35.81 billion in 2018 and is expected to skyrocket to $78.40 billion by 2026.
- According to popular research, about 27% of employees use an ERP system of their companies.
- The average budget per user for the ERP project is $9,000.
Before having an understanding of how large-scale organizations execute their ERP software testing strategies, you need to understand the meaning of ERP software.
In short, ERP is an Enterprise Resource Planning) software that many organizations use to manage their business functions or streamline their operations with a user-friendly interface and a centralized database. It supports them while collecting operational data, promoting data-driven strategies, improving supply-chain efficiency, and helps them improve interdepartmental communication.
ERP Software Testing Process
This exhibits how a company plans and manages the deployment of an ERP application. It is also a methodology in which the company mentions its strategic decisions on how to carry out the implementation and how to choose a path for ERP deployment. In other words, the ERP application testing is a major decision made by the company’s executives and stakeholders. It is also described as the plan for change that maintains compliance with entire organizational goals and objectives.
Also Read: ERP Testing Techniques
What factors large-scale Organizations include in ERP Testing Checklist
More and more companies are using a well-integrated ERP solution as it helps bring competence and efficiency to the business process and allows them to have access to required information on time.
To implement the ERP test plan successfully, companies use some best strategies that you can check below:
Planning & Collection of Requirements
Planning and collection of relevant information are essential to achieve maximum coverage for ERP system testing. Also, it helps to manage the test better from the beginning of the project. For project success, project stakeholders and management executives must include clear reasons in their strategic goals for the implementation.
They need to understand the expectations of the project and ensure that all business needs will be satisfied successfully. Moreover, they need to include resources and set the timing to define the start and end purpose of the implementation.
Selection of Specific Type of ERP Testing
If you are the person who is planning to take ERP testing services from the software testing company, you need to understand that there are various types of ERP testing that can be implemented according to your ERP software’s needs. Common examples of different kinds of ERP testing are as follow:
Functional Testing
After providing the new customized feature in the ERP system, many companies prepare functional test cases for the ERP system so that you can run each module perfectly.
Security Testing
Companies consider security testing as the most effective ERP software testing strategy to protect the sensitive data of your end-to-end employees and employer. Security testing also aims to reduce the chances of data hacking or data theft.
Integration Testing
Integration testing is the most crucial part of testing ERP applications, which requires comprehensive domain knowledge and experience to get the test done. It guarantees that the data and information is integrated well into different modules of the ERP systems.
Performance Testing
Based on the organization's size, one needs to conduct performance testing to understand how the particular business-use ERP software works. It lets you know how many users your software can handle under load.
Suggested Read: Strategic Importance Of ERP Stress Testing
Hire the Right QA Team
ERP solutions are complex in nature. It is essential to choose the right QA team, especially those who know how to use ERP testing tools. They should be familiar with different modules that may include in the ERP system. For example,
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) - Today, companies use CRM-based solutions to handle their client-facing operations such as customer service and marketing. It lets the employees run the lead generation campaigns, track their sales, and even supports them for various other marketing tasks.
Accounting and Finance – With the accounting and finance module, as a company, you can track revenue management, tax management, finances, including expense planning, and the overall budget.
Supply Chain - When buying ERP testing services to track the supply chain module, the QA team assures that you will be able to track products from manufacturing to warehouse and warehouse to distributors and distributors to customers. They also ensure that all features present in the supply chain module, from purchasing, inventory, shipping, and claim processing to product returns, everything will work as expected.
Business Intelligence - The purpose of the business intelligence module is to help you collect and analyze data/information from multiple sources but in real-time. It allows users to make the best business decisions and provides you an advantage of scheduled reporting, customizable dashboards, and visualization tools. Thus, it is necessary to choose the right software testing service provider according to your ERP system's module needs.
Eliminate Defects and Prepare Test Reports
To error is human. Whether you’ve developed an ERP software for educational institutes, manufacturing, small business, construction industry, billing, or accounting, there must be a domain specialist to eliminate the bugs/defects from the ERP system.
You also need to prepare test reports to conduct the testing on similar software in the future. Apart from that, with effective test cases or ERP testing checklist and test reports, you can give proof to your customers about how you’ve done tasks to provide them with a profit or which activities you will test further in order to provide them with more ROI and better improvement in business.
Discover our case studies and check out how the experts at BugRaptors checked the ERP modules of our client’s real estate web application with automation testing.
