While an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system may function like any other software application, testing them is a unique challenge. ERPs are at the heart of your business, which means that misconfigurations or poor implementation can have a lasting impact. SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, and other ERP systems are designed to make your business more effective and more profitable, but it’s important to remember that none of them come ready to go out of the box. Each requires significant customization, configuration and integrations to make it work for you.

The testing of an ERP upgrade or installation shares the fundamentals of all software testing, but requires a shift in thinking. The focus must be on whether the business function works properly for all stakeholders in all the areas of your business: financials, supply chain, operations, human resources, etc.

The good news is that PLATO has always focused on testing from the end user’s perspective and nowhere is this more important than ERP testing.

The time to implement or upgrade an ERP is significant and with each fix or change, the timeline stretches which will impact your business operations.

Most organizations don’t hire for short-term peaks in demand, causing your business experts to split time between the business and your ERP implementation. This often leads to shortcuts being taken and a lack of attention to all the necessary details.

Oftentimes, the experts brought in to validate business function know little about testing fundamentals, which can lead to gaps in testing that are only found when the solution is rolled out across the company.