Best Practices for ERP Testing

Overview:?ERP testing best practices

Testing is critical to implementing and maintaining any type of software, and ERP systems are no exception. In fact, due to the complexity of ERP systems and the importance they have on day-to-day business operations, proper testing is especially crucial.

As a welcome to 2023, we're listing out 23 ERP testing best practices. Let’s jump in.

1. Get stakeholders involved.?

Because ERPs affect nearly every aspect of your business, ERP testing is a team effort. That means that everyone from upper management development teams to the end users that will be performing UAT testing—should be involved and have a say.

2. Know what and why you’re testing.

Perform a deep dive into your business processes and integrations to fully understand what needs to be tested and why. The more you know, the more accurate and efficient your ERP testing strategy will be. Failure to do so can lead to over-testing, which wastes time and money, or under-testing, which leaves your ERP exposed to risk.

3. Create a thorough testing plan.?

Creating a thorough testing plan will help ensure that everyone is on the same page on what needs to be tested. This plan should be visible to everyone involved with testing.

4. Create Testing KPIs.

Create KPI objectives that are specific and measurable to track testing progress.

5. Set a reasonable timeline.

When it comes to conducting ERP application testing, it's essential to set a reasonable timeline based on the size and complexity of the ERP system.

6. Select the right testing team.

Make sure your ERP testing team has the right mix of business leaders, developers, QA engineers, and business users, and that all of them understand their specific roles and timelines for testing deliverables.

7. Test early.?

Testing early (or shift-left testing) is a more efficient way to test and helps avoid potential issues and bottlenecks down the road. Additionally, it’s much less expensive to fix a bug early in the development process than later in the development process.?

8. Test continuously.

Testing continuously ensures that your ERP system is always working optimally, and similar to testing early, continuous testing helps find bugs well before they rear their ugly heads.

9. Use proper test data.

Test results are only as good as the data used in the testing process. Good test data can be obtained by conducting a user survey, doing performance audits, or tracking user activity over time. Opkey also offers automatic test data management, which eliminates the guesswork in finding the right test data.?

Click below to read the rest of our blog post on recommended additional practices for ERP testing.