In the dynamic realm of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, SAP has established itself as a global leader, providing organizations with powerful solutions to manage their business processes effectively. However, the successful implementation and ongoing functionality of SAP systems demand rigorous testing procedures to ensure seamless operations.
Whether you’re an IT professional seeking to enhance your knowledge on core SAP Testing tools or an organization embarking on a new SAP project, understanding the nuances of SAP Testing is critical in achieving business success and maximizing your overall technical investment.
In this article, we delve into the world of SAP testing, exploring its critical role in safeguarding the integrity, reliability, and performance of SAP applications and discussing where our senior-level SAP consultant team can come in to help.
Let’s get started!
What Does SAP Business Process Testing Entail?
As organizations conduct new module implementations, customizations, and integrations over time, they must first check the functionality of each change in individual test cases to ensure they perform as expected before being released into the production environment.
SAP Testing refers to the process of validating the functionality of each new SAP module or integration to confirm they operate as intended and ensure any new features don’t hinder overall functionality across the entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) landscape.
From patch management to new module implementations, configuration updates, functional tests, or occasional software bug fixes, SAP’s output-based testing methodology offers both automated testing and manual testing tools to enable a more efficient testing process and more accurate results.
Why is SAP Testing Important for Business Users?
Efficient system testing plays a critical role in ensuring systems, teams, departments, and companies as a whole are prepared for new modules, integrations, or functionality in their existing SAP systems. With SAP test automation tools, organizations can speed up the end-to-end testing lifecycle, ensure proper functionality, and prepare complex SAP business processes for change over time.
Here are a few key advantages of leveraging SAP testing tools to test system functionality:
System Validation
SAP Testing provides complete end-to-end testing and validation of all existing SAP modules, ensuring critical business systems function properly and the SAP environment can withstand new implementations, configurations, and integrations over time.
Compliance Requirements
By conducting SAP Testing, companies ensure their new SAP implementations meet evolving compliance requirements and that all modules operate according to their specific configuration.
This way, they can maintain compliance with both organizational and industry requirements over time and mitigate risks across the entire organization.
System Integration
When a new integration is built between individual modules, systems, or areas of the organization, users need to ensure the integration functions as expected and does not hinder the efficiency of existing applications or operations across the organization.
SAP Testing allows companies to perform reports, workflows, GUI forms, data flows, and more to check and validate system integration between each SAP solution throughout the entire SAP landscape.
For example, if a sales order workflow must pass through both SAP Sales and Distribution and SAP Material Management, then SAP Testing will check the functionality of the integrations between each involved system.
Cost and Revenue
On the one hand, SAP Testing involves reducing the overall development costs for new SAP functionality and improving predictability across the entire SAP landscape over time.
On the other, SAP’s output-based testing methodology helps companies ensure the overall quality of their SAP systems and maximizes both costs and revenues across the board.
New Implementation
To keep SAP systems up and running over time, companies must implement new changes to their existing systems, including patches, bug fixes, and configuration changes, and add new modules to their SAP environment.
SAP Testing makes it easier for organizations to ensure all their critical business modules perform as per requirement in a dynamic SAP landscape, leading to more aligned systems, higher quality modules, and better process efficiency in the long run.
System Performance
SAP Testing helps companies improve core system performance by ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are met, reducing the total amount of time required to complete tasks in the system, and optimizing business process efficiency across the board.
Types of Testing in SAP Applications
Here’s a closer look at the main types of testing involved in SAP testing processes:
1) Unit Testing
Unit testing focuses on testing the functionality of various different units throughout the existing SAP system, including interfaces, workflows, forms, reports, conversions, security authorizations, data transfer rules, and more.
Companies also leverage unit testing functionality to test specific development objects, like data reconciliation and batch scheduling, to maintain proper functionality and ensure unit testing rules are met over time.
2) Regression Testing
Regression tests are conducted to ensure that any new system changes do not negatively affect the system’s existing working code and is typically done using automation tools by the testing team.
This occurs whenever new patches are applied, configurations are made, modules are implemented, or the system suffers any other kind of significant change, confirming that existing functionality within the system still functions as expected with the add-ons.
3) Integration Testing
Integration testing involves assessing new and existing integrations between SAP applications and third-party systems to ensure they function together correctly.
This kind of testing is typically done in a Quality Assurance (QA) test environment and leverages realistic test data to ensure that triggers, reports, and workflows function properly and consistently across the SAP landscape.
4) Functional Testing
SAP applications are highly-configurable and can be easily integrated with other non-SAP applications or third-party systems, so it requires a series of functional tests to determine whether or not all SAP and non-SAP modules meet business requirements.
In this phase, testing teams create test requirements, cases, and scenarios to perform functional unit testing, review system design documents, remove uncertainty within business use cases, and improve the quality of both data and tests across the entire SAP landscape.
5) Performance Testing
Performance testing refers to analyzing the core performance of existing SAP systems, determining the stability of the entire SAP landscape, and identifying performance objectives to ensure both existing and new functionality within the system operate as expected.
SAP performance testing also help companies identify and reduce system bottlenecks, reduce the amount of stress involved in managing processes that require high transaction or batch volumes, and monitors test results through the collaboration of basis, database, infrastructure, and testing teams.
6) Security Testing
Security testing is performed to ensure the security of existing SAP applications, and, more specifically, high-risk areas like network security, product security, operational security, SAP Portal security, and more. This typically involves collaboration across basis, database, infrastructure, and development teams.
By conducting security testing in SAP, organizations can execute relevant transactions, assess the security of their existing SAP applications, and ensure only authorized system users have access to appropriate data and processes across the landscape.
7) User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
User acceptance testing (UAT) views SAP products from the user perspective, allowing organizations to assess the system’s ability to meet all business requirements tied to designated job functions. A company’s quality assurance team must understand all core business processes to ensure all the desired features and functionalities within the system are available and functioning as expected.
Independent end users can also execute user acceptance test cases that involve testing core business processes, documentation functions, and more to help users gain more familiarity with their existing systems and take more ownership of their own SAP systems.
8) Portal Testing
Portal testing involves testing the SAP Portal on multiple different browsers and devices to ensure consistent functionality across the board.
Users typically conduct portal testing alongside functional unit testing to assess the functionality of each portal and ensure core business requirements are met and validated.
Main Phases to Test SAP Applications
Whether your company is leveraging Maintenance Lifecycle, Upgrade Lifecycle, or Custom Development Lifecycle, or any other testing methodology to conduct and test SAP implementations, there are three main testing phases required for testing teams.
Let’s take a closer look at each phase of the SAP Testing process for business users:
Test Preparation
The Preparation phase for SAP Testing involves assessing existing systems, processes, and personnel and ensuring robust and comprehensive test coverage across the entire SAP landscape.
Here are the main steps involved in the SAP Test Preparation phase:
- Identify existing systems, applications, and business processes to be tested.
- Outline and create business-critical test data.
- Conduct both manual and automated development for test scripts, cases, and scenarios.
- Create and review multiple different test suites.
- Configure and deploy a test system environment.
Test Execution
The Execution phase simplifies SAP automation testing functions and allows companies to improve test data management before the tests are conducted within the test environment.
Here are the main steps involved in the SAP Test Execution phase:
- Execute testing phases, either using a manual testing tool or an automated testing tool.
- Conduct testing for status reporting and defect handling across systems and applications.
Test Evaluation
The Evaluation phase allows users to assess the status and success of their entire SAP landscape, making it easier to identify system defects and proactively resolve issues or fix bugs.
Here are the main steps involved in the SAP Test Evaluation phase:
- Generate a detailed assessment of all testing plans.
- Conduct defect analysis to identify issues and existing software bugs.
- Document all areas of the SAP Testing process.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help implementing new SAP modules for the first time, additional support conducting complex SAP regression testing to optimize DevOps functions across teams, or just an extra hand navigating different test scenarios in your SAP system, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our senior-level, US-based SAP consultant team has the right knowledge, skills, and experience to handle all your most important SAP project needs the right way — the first time.
From first-time implementations to complex system integrations, automated tests for new modules, product enhancements, and everything in between, we’ve got you covered!
Getting Started with Us
Interested in learning how automation testing in SAP can facilitate more efficient business processes and improve the functionality of your entire SAP landscape? Ready to get started on a project with our team of expert SAP consultants?
Contact us today for more information!
