The Crucial Role of Testing in Ensuring ERP Project Success

What are the benefits and approaches that organisations use for testing their new ERP system?

The key benefits for undertaking a comprehensive testing programme as part of your ERP system update are;

1. To check that all of the functionality that was identified during the requirements workshops, and built as part of the system build, is working correctly and will support the business processes as envisaged.

2. To provide a level of confidence that the system will work as expected when you move to your deployment phase and start to use the system in a live environment.

3. Help with user adoption once gone live. Having the key users doing the User Acceptance testing gives them a level of ownership for the new system , leading to better user adoption levels.

4. Helps to minimise risk when the system goes live. Thorough testing will weed out any major issues before they get into the live system, helping to reduce instances of business disruption due to system processes not working as expected.

The main types of testing that organisations undertake as part of their ERP projects include;

1. Unit testing - Initial functional tests that are run once the system build has been completed. The focus should be on ensuring that the main functional areas that were identified during the requirements workshops are all working correctly and in particular where customisations have been undertaken to the core ERP functionality.

2. Integration Testing - this should focus on testing any interfaces or integrations that have been built between the core ERP system and ancillary systems that are in use in the business/ Typically these include payment systems (supplier payments and customer payments), sales order interfaces, production systems interfaces, and CRM or other customer-facing systems.

3. User Acceptance Testing - this usually involves the key end users working through end-to-end process tests based on the agreed business processes that they will use day-to-day on the new system. These tests need to be documented thoroughly to ensure that all of them are tested (and re-tested) until the users can sign off on them for use in the live system.

4. Performance Testing - this should be included in the test programme in particular where there are large transaction volumes being processed either manually or via interfaces. The objective is to ensure that the underlying system hardware and software infrastructure can handle the transaction volumes at an acceptable level and pace to allow the business get through their daily workloads easily.

Depending on the size of the ERP project, many organisations will put in place a Test Manager as part of the overall ERP team to oversee the test programme specifically. This ensures that the test programme gets the full attention that is deserves as it is a crucial part of the implementation process. There is normally a lot of detailed coordination required to plan the test programme, and ensure that the tests are being completed, that fault logs are being recorded and addressed properly and that the business users and process owners are in a position to sign off on the test programme and move onto the final deployment phase in line with the overall project plan.