5 Key Steps to Effective SAP Testing

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5 Key Steps to Effective SAP Testing
Before moving forward with the SAP testing
insights, we first need to have an idea about the
basics of what SAP and moreover what ERP is all
about. ERP, or Enterprise Resource planning as
its called, is a comprehensive resources
software that offers advanced and extensive
features for organizing and managing your company
processes on a single digital platform. These
processes include production, manufacturing,
logistics, distribution, finance, CRM, sales,
human resources, etc. Its an integrated platform
that accelerates data sharing through its
interconnected modules. It helps eliminate data
redundancy and efficiently utilizes available
resources across departments and business
processes.
SAP (or Systems, Applications and Products) on
the other hand, is one of the most popular ERP
solutions used by major Fortune 500 companies
across the globe. It enables companies to manage
business processes efficiently and minimize
operational costs.
What is SAP Testing? SAP testing involves testing
different modules of the SAP ERP software. A
typical ERP system comprises of different
modules like the way we mentioned above finance,
accounting sales etc. SAP offers a standard
template for all these modules which are later
customized as
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per individual companys specific requirements.
Post these customizations, businesses approach
an SAP testing service provider to test their
customization and ensure they function
efficiently as per their business set standards.
Thats where SAP testing comes centre stage,
ensuring the software is efficiently adopted
inside the company systems. Post SAP is
completely absorbed into the system, it requires
constant updates, such as new module
implementations or bug fixes that again require
thorough testing before being released into the
company systems. Hence SAP testing is an ongoing
process that must work in cycles to avoid
downtimes and increase employee efficiency.

• Types of SAP Testing
• There are 8 different types of SAP testing types
  that any software testing company would
  incorporate into their testing suite to ensure
  end-to-end testing of your complete business
  processes
• Unit Testing
• Unit testing includes testing every single
  component or isolated piece of software. More
  like a white box testing technique, unit testing
  is generally performed by developers who have
  full knowledge of the complete code and
  programming used to test the functionality of the
  software. It helps reduce the cost of testing at
  an early stage.
• Integration Testing
• Similar to scenario testing, its a type of
  testing generally performed on realistic data. To
  see if the systems are functioning efficiently.
• Regression Testing
• Regression testing ensures that the new changes
  updated on the code will not adversely affect
  the existing working code. SAP being an
  integrated system, any change made on a single
  stack update, OSS note, transport note, or others
  can affect the functioning of the entire system
  in use.
• Performance Testing
• This testing checks the performance of an
  application under the different stimuli. It
  examines whether the systems response time is
  acceptable, whats the speed of the periodic
  processes, whether the expected user load on the
  peak can be supported by the existing systems
  etc.
• Essentially it identifies processing bottlenecks
  and ABAP code inefficiencies.
• Functional Testing

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• It ensures that your SAP implementation meets
  your business requirements as a whole. SAP
  modules that are delivered by the systems are
  highly configurable and could be easily
  integrated with other applications or third-party
  tools. Functional testing ensures these
  integrations are well-executed across the
  platform.
• Security Testing
• Security testing ensures every user can execute
  transactions and have access to data thats
  essentially required. Its typically done in a QA
  environment in which test IDs are created giving
  access to users as per their interaction with the
  software.
• End-User Testing User Acceptance Testing
• Though closely related but not identical, the
  purpose of both these testing methods is to
  ensure the end-user can execute the designated
  tasks associated with that particular software.
  End-user and acceptance testing ideally refer to
  your original application blueprint and checks
  if the expected features and functions stated by
  the client are effectively functioning or not.
• SAP Interface Testing
• It occurs at various points throughout the
  project. As a part of the project development
  phase, isolated interface testing falls under
  the unit testing banner. In the QA environment,
  interface testing involves observing the
  execution of business transactions and following
  the business output thats generated. Effective
  interface testing shows how efficiently automated
  your current systems are.

5 Key Steps to Effective SAP Testing Transitioning
to an SAP-based ERP model can be a tricky task.
Agile testing for SAP systems plays a vital role
here else approaching it with a manual testing
methodology can take weeks or maybe months to be
fully executed. Spending too much time before you
release every single time you make a change in
your model means you are defeating the purpose
of moving to SAP altogether. Below mentioned are
5 key steps for moving to a more efficient SAP
testing model 1. Adopt Test Automation At an
Early Stage Almost all leading software testing
companies today are turning to Robotic test
automation to keep their businesses safe from
bugs, reduce system incompatibilities and
security vulnerabilities. Automating your
business processes allows you to test changes
without any loopholes, more like testing
reinvented for the modern Agile testing services.
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• Dont Just Stick with Risk-Based Testing
• One issue with risk-based testing is that
  companies mostly check only those segments in a
  system that may have an impact once, change has
  been made in the other segment. The problem with
  this form of focused testing methodology is that
  it essentially skips most interconnected
  scenarios and therefore opens the organization to
  more risks and potential process delays.
  Therefore, you must approach risk-based testing
  cautiously and ensure no loopholes are left out
  of the system untested.
• Go Beyond UI
• SAP is used in a variety of ways by multiple
  organization. As an effective business unit, you
  need to ensure your testing is comprehensive in
  every possible way, making sure you cover every
  single stakeholder associated with that
  particular system in use. Manually mapping out
  the people who may be affected by the slightest
  change in the interface at any level is next to
  impossible. Ignoring this step may bring your
  essential business systems to a screeching halt,
  particularly when most of your process flows rely
  on other systems to access and use SAP data for
  essential business transactions.
• Move to Shift-Left Testing Techniques
• Shifting left in testing means testing early and
  more often in the entire testing lifecycle for a
  particular project in hand. As a reality check,
  most companies often wait till the very end to
  initiate their SAP testing process,
  misapprehending it to be a complex process with
  more than usual dependencies. As a result, most
  software testing companies end up with
  delayed-release cycles and products full of
  defects. Effective use of service virtualizations
  in the process can help with SAP regression
  testing early in the testing lifecycle even
  before the need for a QA for the process.
  Companies have started shifting left, early and
  more often in ways that werent possible before
  with the new testing technologies.
• For more info on why companies must move to shift
  left testing techniques read our blog Why
  Choose Shift-Left and Shift-Right Testing
  Approach?
• Integrate Testing with CI/CD
• You need to start SAP testing as soon as the code
  is ready to be deployed. The moment your team
  reaches the level of testing integrations, going
  beyond the UI and reaching up to regression
  testing, you must slip it into the CI/CD
  workflows. The idea behind incorporating RPA is
  to make the entire testing process smoother and
  simpler and hence incorporating it within the
  Continuous integration and development workflows
  can help accelerate the process even further.

Hire Experts to Smoothen The Process
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The five key steps mentioned above are only a
small part of the key essentials you need to
make sure your SAP applications are integrated
smoothly into your running business flows.
Approaching a professional Software testing
solutions provider expert in the SAP testing
domain can help ease out the process. ImpactQAs
ERP testing solutions offer unique methodologies
and a holistic approach to tackle enterprise
software testing for every business type.
Through their cutting-edge QA services, ImpactQA
can provide customised solutions for your
end-to-end ERP testing project starting from test
planning, strategies, and test preparation to
test management, coordination, and
implementation. Have a new project in mind?
Schedule a call now and our SAP testing experts
will get in touch with you.