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What is ERP and why companies need ERP software?

ERP means Enterprise Resource Planning. In a more practical thought, if an Enterprise (an
organization or a company) is Planning to increase the productivity and efficiency by
integrating the Resource, then it is ERP.
What are the resources? It is called as 4Ms in any type of organization like: Man, Machine,
Method and Materials.
Every ERP Software in the globe is built based on this concept in mind. Every company
needs an Accounting or ERP solution which is a fact of any business.
An organization may use one or many software as per the requirements of the individual
departments. For example, the Accounts department may use accounting software
developed in Oracle technologies, finance department may use budgeting software
developed in Microsoft technologies, personnel department may use payroll software
developed in Java and inventory department may use warehousing software developed by
IBM and so on.
Apart from the technologies, each software is different. The database used for storing the
data is also different like Oracle, SQL Server, DB/2 etc.
Most importantly, the data available in one department is not available for the other
department, as the data is not stored in a centralized location. This situation arises many
complexities in a business scenario of an enterprise organization and reduces the
productivity of the company as well as impact the efficiency of the employees.
For instance, the sales manager doesnt know the inventory stock in the warehouse for
committing the sales order with a customer and the Vice President of the company doesnt
know the financial status of the company until unless visit the department or have a phone
call with them.
ERP Software consider all these various business situations and functional flow scenarios
and giving the solution to the enterprise customers by integrating the multiple departments
workflow inside the organization and centralizing the database through a server
infrastructure.

A snapshot of the ERP enabled business organization will be captured as below.

(Click on image for enlarged view)

ERP Vendors
There are many ERP vendors in International market.
Below is a quick list of ERP software and its vendors based on the market shares, cost,
implementation model, average time for deployment, platform and delivery, technology,
features and functionalities. Each vendor offers different flavors of the product depends on
the customers domain and industry verticals.

SAP (#1) From SAP since 1972, major market share holders, millions of users
worldwide.
Microsoft Dynamics (#2) From Microsoft Corporation, millions of users worldwide.
Oracle E-Business Suite (#3) From Oracle Corporation, millions of users worldwide.
Epicor ERP
Sage ERP
NetSuite
Infor ERP

Ramco ERP
Focus ERP
Tally ERP

ERP Modules
What are ERP Modules? Module in ERP is a group of features and functionalities for a specific
group of process or departmental workflow.
For example, sales order process, payment process and customer management can be
grouped as a unique functional workflow in a company and can be formed under Sales &
Distribution module and similarly employee attendance, payroll process, personnel
management can be grouped as a unique functional workflow in a company and can be
formed under HR & Payroll module.
For testing purpose, understanding the features, functionalities and workflow is most
important. Without proper knowledge, testing ERP modules is very critical and cumbersome.
ERP vendors may have different module name for grouping the functionalities, but the
concept will be the same. For example, let us have a quick look on few SAP modules to have
an idea if we are performing SAP Testing.

SAP
SAP
SAP
SAP
SAP
SAP
SAP

FICO (for Financial and Cost Accounting)

HR (for Human Resources)
MM (for Materials Management)
PP (for Production Planning)
SD (for Sales & Distribution)
CRM (for Customer Relationship Management)
SCM (for Supply Chain Management)

Similarly, every ERP software is having such modules as per their functionality grouping and
naming conventions.
Importance of ERP Testing
Majority of the ERP Implementation projects fails because of the improper test planning and
testing. To understand the importance of ERP testing, testing professionals needs to
understand the variations of the ERP systems.
ERP systems may be available in multiple versions for multiple domains targeting multiple
customers. For example, major ERP vendors are having different versions and flavors of
their ERP software as below.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV: Designed for small and medium enterprise customers
Microsoft Dynamics AX: Designed for large enterprise customers

System testing, performance testing and load testing is important, apart from
the functional testing.
SAP Insurance: Designed for Insurance companies
SAP Banking: Designed for Banking sectors
SAP Chemical: Designed for Chemical companies

Domain knowledge and industry experience is importance, apart from the

functional testing.

Similarly, the products from Oracle viz., E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD
Edwards etc, each have different features, target customers and industries, where the
testing team needs to understand the purpose and functionalities of the complete systems.
There are two types of testing teams available in ERP companies:
-----------

Core testing team to test the base ERP software with the static functionalities.
Implementation testing team to test the implementation project with dynamic and
customized functionalities.

When a feature and functionality is customized as per the customer requirements, the
modified impact will be on multiple modules and systems. The testing team should capture
each and every changes and the related impact for the complete traceability.
ERP companies are having dedicated testing force for testing their ERP systems. Testing
such a large system requires the test execution to be automated. Depends upon the
requirements, the ERP companies design their automated testing framework and setup
their testing infrastructure.
Automated testing is suggested for ERP testing as manual testing requires lot of time to
complete one round of testing. It is evidence, that without testing each and every
component of a system and ensuring 100% quality, ERP implementation fails.
The below is the list of different type of ERP testing as most of the ERP systems are being
built in an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

Functional testing
Data Handling testing
Integrity testing
System testing
Security testing
Reliability testing
Adaptability testing
Scalability testing
Usability testing
Performance testing
Load testing
Interface testing
Interoperability testing
Regression testing

Infrastructure testing
Image testing
Installation testing
Parallel testing

Why ERP Testing is Critical?

ERP Testing is really critical, if the testing plans not cover the complete road-map of the
implementation phase. All the modules within the system are completely integrated and
inter-related, means all the functionalities are dependent on the functionalities of other
modules or other systems.
For example, to create a sales order in Sales module, the system has to check the
available stock in the Inventory module and check the credit limit of the customer in
Customer module.
The functionality is not only dependent on other modules, but also dependent on external
systems like a multi currency enabled system retrieves the current exchange rate from an
external live system, the shipping rate for the sales order may be required from an external
live system, the sales tax of the inventory items may be required from a government
agency etc.,
When a test case is written based on the above business use case, a tester needs to
understand the complete workflow of the functionality and the dependency of the workflow,
otherwise the test case will fail or remain incomplete.
Below diagram gives an overview of a sales order process and the dependency of internal
and external systems.

Apart from the functional testing like in the above business use case, the other phase of
testing is on the ERP Implementation which is more critical. The implementation phase of
ERP involves lot of modifications and customization as per the customer requirements and
infrastructure.
This kind of testing not only involves the normal functional testing but also the performance
and user acceptance testing. There are multiple components interacted with the live system
from internal and external sources.
Understanding all the components and their functionalities is more important for testing
professionals to prepare the test plans and the test suite with all the feasible use cases to
be covered for the application under testing.

The successful ERP testing professionals are trained and worked on lot of different ERP
implementations for many years and gather experience to become a capable ERP tester with
an additional credential as a subject matter expert or a domain expert.
The heart of many ERP system is in Accounting or Finance module, where most of the
testers are lacking accounting knowledge and hard to understand the financial concepts and
the general ledger system. The complexity in the inter-related and the outer-related
workflow of the ERP systems demotivates the testing professionals in writing a proper ERP
test suite.
Particularly, the implementation of ERP systems requires various forms of system testing,
multiple user acceptance testing, multiple level of performance and load testing with
millions of live test data from the existing systems which needs to be imported to the new
ERP system.
The main challenge is in collecting input data for testing the feature and analyzing the
correctness of the output data, which requires domain knowledge.
For example, it is not that much easy to collect data to test the general ledger transactions
or a sales order transactions in ERP systems. Even though, the data is collected for input, it
is highly critical to understand and analyze the correctness of output data as per the
financial standards like IFRS.
For example, a balance sheet generated from the general ledger transactions cannot be
understandable by normal testers without the knowledge of a balance sheet or trial balance.
The reason being the balance sheet is generated from the general ledger based on
multiple transactions from all the modules.
(Click on image for enlarged view)

Can I Test ERP Software?

The important question for testing professionals is Can I test ERP system with my available
knowledge and experience?. The answer to this question is not simple Yes or No, but
requires self-assessment.
ERP systems are available in multiple languages, supporting multiple currencies, adaptable
for multiple platforms, targeting multiple domains and designed for multiple users. And, the
testers are not going to test the complete ERP system individually or alone.
No one is expected to have the complete and full knowledge and experience of all the
modules in ERP or multiple languages expertise or multiple industrial exposures. But, testing
professionals needs to ask themselves few questions as below, which will help them to
prepare for ERP road-map.

Do I know ERP and ERP Modules?

Did I write test cases for ERP before?
Did I execute test cases for ERP before?
Do I have any technical knowledge like Scripting, HTML, XML and SQL?
Do I have any industrial exposure like Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Banking etc?
How many ERP modules I am going to Test?
Do I need training for ERP testing?
ERP testing is manual or automated?
I am part of Core testing team or Implementation testing team?

ERP Testing Road-map

So, lets prepare ourselves with a road-map with a checklist for ERP testing. Point to note is
that the testing effort might be almost equal to development effort for ERP testing and
the ERP companies are trying to setup a platform and infrastructure to reduce the effort, but
increasing the efficiency and productivity.
This is a quick checklist and may vary on a case-to-case basis.
ERP Testing Checklist:
Sl.No. Action Item
1.

Identify the scope of testing and

check the ERP testing is for the
base product or for the
implementation project.

2.

Identify the total modules available

/ released in the product for the
application under testing.

3.

Identify the target customers,

system users, and industry
verticals of the product to be
implemented.

4.

Estimate the testing effort for

writing testing plan, test suite, test
cases, test execution and test
reports.

5.

Check the status of previous

testing strategy, test execution
plans for the application under
testing.

6.

Identify the business process to be

tested and identify the business
process to be automated.

7.

Identify the test scenarios to be

tested and identify the test
scenarios to be automated.

Status

Sl.No. Action Item

8.

Analyze the existing testing

framework for manual and
automated testing for the ERP
application under testing.

9.

Check the existing / proposed

automated testing tool is
configured and the framework is
well tested for execution.

10.

Setup the Quality Assurance

strategy with the quality metrics
identified for the ERP testing for
both manual and automation.

11.

Analyse the automation test scripts

for all the business use case
scenarios are well reviewed and
approved.

12.

Identify the best practices for

improving the efficiency and
productivity of testing efforts for
both manual and automation.

13.

Form a testing team with the group

of experienced professionals with
the right skill set for both manual
and automated ERP testing.

14.

Setup the testing framework for

maintaining the test scripts which
can be reusable in automation
process.

15.

Escalate the test scenario /

business use cases which are not
feasible to test or not feasible for
automation framework.

16.

Identify the process of collecting

test data for both input and output
and check the availability of
domain expert to analyze the

Status

Sl.No. Action Item

Status

output data.

Conclusion
Before getting into ERP testing, the testing professionals needs to understand the concepts,
process and strategies and the criticalities of ERP testing. Yes, now we are ready to start the
testing process with a quick road-map in hand.
Next ERP testing tutorial: So, our next step is to initiate the ERP testing process
by preparing the QA & Test Plan, preparing the Test Suite with module wise Test Cases,
identify the best practices for manual and automated Test Execution and