With constant business changes due to M&A, reorganizations, ensuring zero defects in critical business processes while optimizing on the cost of quality is one of the biggest challenges organizations face. The impact increases when the complexity of the SAP landscape grows due to high level of customizations and integrations with non-SAP legacy systems. 93% of the SAP projects take longer than expected, despite which critical incidents are logged in production. Mindtree partners with organizations to help deliver high quality at optimized costs by addressing these challenges through MindTest™ (proven test methodology for predictable quality), by involving the right experts and implementing reusable test frameworks.
- Cost of testing activities is between 30-45% for a global SAP deployment project and around 80% for a migration project - Panorama SAP reports.
- Mindtree has done a survey to seek views on the top SAP testing challenges. When the challenges that were rated 4 and above (in a scale of 5) by greater than 50% respondents were collated, an interesting pattern emerged. The top challenges included effective test design post understanding of business processes, maintaining updated test documentation, scoping test plans for optimal coverage and test project management.
Top challenges
- Effective test design post understanding of business processes
- Maintaining updated test documentation
- Scoping test plans for optimal coverage
- Test project management
Testing survey report from Panaya:
- 48% do not have a dedicated QA manager function
- Only 25% use automated testing
- Over 50% of the organizations do not use a dedicated test management tool
- Around 20% effectively offshore independent testing
Mindtree advantage
- Up to 30% reduction in testing costs and time to market leveraging on test automation and effective test methodology
- Effective handling of spike requirements and optimal utilization through core-flex resourcing model
- Risk Based test identification framework for faster time to market without compromising on test quality
- Strong process governance through MindTest™ for achieving DRE > 95%
- Proven methodology for TCoE setup – 5+ active Testing Center of Excellences
- Methodology aligned with ASAP and ISO 29119, the new international software testing standard
- A reusable SAP test automation framework to reduce the automation development efforts by more than 50%
- Test Strategy Consulting kit for current state gap analysis and roadmap definition
These differentiators help our customers to ensure zero risk of their critical business processes failing at the same time reducing the overall testing costs by around 30%.
Our Solution
Sales targets achieved for a global consumer goods giant with simplified distribution management system.
Customer: A Fortune 500 consumer goods company.
Project overview: Next generation distribution management system solution developed using SAP IS Retail V6 and integrated with the sales target forecasting solution and mobility applications to help the distributors to efficiently manage the salesman and achieve the sales targets.
Business challenges:
- Provide the Distributors with a Next Generation solution build on SAP IS Retail V6 and customized to Portal for distributor operations
- Integrate the ISR (IS Retail) solution with the sales target forecasting system which calculates sales targets based on business. Provides the details about the sales at outlet and salesman level
- Integrate the ISR solution with the mobility application to help the salesman to monitor and achieve the sales targets
Testing challenges:
- Testing country specific requirements and integration of mobility and ISR solution with limited documentation
- Integration of the sale target forecasting solution and Mobility application with the ISR solution
- Streamlining of the Test life cycle processes and tool usage
- Reduction of manual test effort and test cycles through automation
Mindtree solution:
- Identification of regression test suite from the Baseline solution and automated the test scripts using Mindtree’s SAP test automation framework
- Conversion of Knowledge sharing sessions in to video files which helped team to understand requirements and integration areas better
- Streamlining of Test processes using MindTest™ and utilization of tools like Solution Manager, Test Link and RADAR for test and defect management
Business benefits:
- Manual testing effort gradually decreased as automation coverage of the baseline solution increased which could be reused for multiple release / upgrades. Mindtree’s SAP Test automation framework reduced the regression effort by 45 person days per release
- Reduction of manual regression test effort freed up bandwidth for focusing on higher risk integration areas thereby reducing post release defects
- Reduction of time and effort on training the test engineers saved up to 20% time in the on- boarding process
Automation and upgrade of a multi country rollout testing, accelerated by Mindtree.
Customer: Largest ICT service provider.
Overview: Build a SAP test automation solution to automate upgrade and multi-country rollout testing.
Key testing challenges:
- Short and multiple release cycle. High degree of customization, especially in logistics
- High cost of testing due to lack of automation. This had to be addressed by automating the existing test cases with minimal impact on ongoing regression cycles
Mindtree solution:
- Automated 320+ SAP R / 3 workflows across Logistics, Finance and HR
- Data driven approach - automated scripts were run iteratively with multiple test data sets
- Automated master data scripts - enabled quick creation of master data post system refresh
- Tester handbook, detailed description of critical process flows and knowledge scorecards for tracking team’s knowledge levels
Business benefits:
- Saved 300+ person days of effort for regression testing of 14 cycles over a period of 18 months
- Reused test scripts from SAP 4.7 to ECC 5.0 through ECC 6.0 with minimal changes and was able to cover regression testing of SAP rollout across 9 countries
- This translated to ROI of 75% saving on testing effort for countries where automation was implemented
