What is Enterprise Application Testing?

Enterprises are racing to become more efficient and competitive. They’re modernizing their applications and introducing new technologies along the way. 

And these applications keep enterprises running, connecting the business with customers and vendors, and aligning employees across the business. 

By testing these enterprise applications, we ensure they run as expected, and avoid downtime scenarios that have a direct impact on your bottom-line. 

In this short post, you’ll read even more about what enterprise application testing is, and why it’s so important. 

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What is enterprise application testing?
Why is enterprise application testing so important?

What is enterprise application testing?

Enterprise application testing is about ensuring the quality of software used in enterprise technology stacks. Both old and new – from mainframes, to platforms like Salesforce, and cloud-based software. 

Related reading: How to Test Salesforce Integrations in SAP using Selenium

These tech stacks are immense, and they are essential in running business critical processes (no matter the industry). From enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management, to product lifecycle management, and so much more. 

They are connected like cogs in a machine. If one of these cogs breaks, customers can’t do business, employees can’t work and vendors can’t deliver. 

So naturally the goal is to test these systems to make sure they’re working. And the bigger the organization is, the more resources, time, and money it takes to get full test coverage. 

Why is enterprise application testing so important?

There are many reasons. We’re going to cover three in particular: application release cycles, customizations, and testing end-to-end.

Application release cycles and customizations

Applications are regularly updated, which results in multiple releases a year. 

• Salesforce has three major releases/year, each offering new and improved features
• Dynamics 365 follows a cadence of eight releases/year
• And if you rely on web-based applications, factor in browser updates

This forces businesses to continuously test and develop their many applications which can quickly mount and cause technical debt.

Investec, a leading bank and wealth management business, faced similar issues. With a tech-stack consisting of legacy and web-based applications, ensuring test coverage was impossible. Manually testing business critical processes took 3-4 weeks for every feature release, halting business agility.

Additionally, these applications are customized to fit organization's unique needs, making release cycles and updates even more complex to test. 

Testing end-to-end

Enterprise business needs are evolving faster than development. End-to-end (E2E) testing can speed up the development process by testing a process from start to finish to ensure integrations and new functions of an application work as one.

Related Reading: How to do End-to-end Testing in Agile Teams

In theory, it gives developers and application owners the assurance that any code developed can be shipped with confidence, without breaking. 

However, E2E isn’t so straight forward in an enterprise that tests across applications. Applications are typically not owned by a single department. They’re owned by several. 

So it’s not unusual for each of these departments to use different methods for testing. One department could be using a code-based test automation tool like Selenium. Some could be using visual test automation. Others, only manual testing. 

Adding the step of sharing the results of these tests, and streamlining the process across applications then adds another layer of complexity. 

It creates silos by making it more challenging to build and maintain end-to-end tests. As a result, verifying productions and ensuring QA suddenly becomes a whole lot slower. 

But if it isn’t done, it can lead to major software bugs with devastating consequences. 

And it’s these situations that make quality assurance and testing an integral part of organizations. 

“...quality operations and quality engineers play a more pivotal role than ever in enabling organizations to achieve higher levels of flexibility and agility, while ensuring positive business outcomes and greater customer satisfaction” - Mark Buenen, Global Leader in Quality Engineering and Testing @ Capgemini - World Quality Report ‘22-23. 

So what’s the solution? 

Keeping up with application releases and customizations, while ensuring applications work end to end sounds like a lot. And it is. 

If manual testing and complicated webs of different automation tools can’t get you there, where do you go next?

Firstly, automate as many of the manual tasks as makes sense. And secondly, make sure the automation solution you choose can:

1. Keep maintenance to a minimum. By reducing the maintenance of test automation, you speed up the testing process. As a result, your data and your tests become more reliable.
2. Reduce onboarding and build times. When automation can be used by many, rather than a few technical experts, QA and development teams can do more with less and focus on the business initiatives that matter.
3. Works across your entire tech stack. With automation that can work across teams, roles, and technologies, risk is reduced across the entire enterprise landscape. 

To learn more about the nuances of testing enterprise applications, carry on reading this post on What Businesses Forget When Testing Enterprise Applications. You’ll find the common slip-up’s made by businesses, and what you can do to avoid them.

For more tips on running efficient, lean testing practices across departments and roles, check out our webinar on how Admincontrol increased their competitiveness through seamless QA automation. Find out more about Leapwork for Enterprise Testing in this solution brief.