Enterprises across the globe are migrating to cloud to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing – flexibility, reliability, scalability, low operating costs, and real-time access to data. Since Cloud ERP solutions play a critical role in improving the accuracy and efficiency of your business, it is essential that they align with your business objectives. This is where user acceptance testing comes in.

The role of different types of testing activities is to find bugs and logical mistakes in the software. However, they don’t tell you whether your Cloud ERP solution is aligned with your business objectives. To succeed in digital transformation initiative, it is necessary that your Cloud ERP solution can perform required tasks in real-world scenarios. Thus, conducting UAT testing is essential to ensure that the developers have created the right product for the actual end users.

What is User Acceptance Testing (UAT)?

Even after multiple rounds of testing of features and functionalities, there’s a possibility that your Cloud ERP solution isn’t aligned with your business objectives. UAT ensures that what is developed and configured has the capability to execute real-world tasks. Simply put, UAT is the final testing phase in which actual or end users test your Cloud ERP solution in a production-like environment to validate whether app is developed to operate in real-world situations.

Not only does UAT save you from launch failures but also helps in change management. Since end users are involved in this type of testing, they get the chance to work on Cloud ERP to understand that it is more about streamlining the business processes. Only after their approval, Cloud ERP is considered as production ready.

Why is UAT critical for your business?

UAT is all about validating whether the Cloud ERP solution corresponds with the needs of business users and is ready for launch.

• It ensures that ERP is aligned with business requirements.

According to research, 80 percent of the ERP implementation projects fail. And the main reason behind them is change mismanagement. Many enterprises fail to allocate sufficient time for UAT during the implementation phase. Due to this, they often fail to find important flaws or malfunctions that will result in user dissatisfaction. UAT is the only way to manage change by verifying that ERP can handle operations in real-world circumstances and supports business users by solving targeted problems.

• Avoiding losses.

Fixing bugs in the early stages of development can be cost-effective as compared to postproduction. UAT allows development teams to detect and fix bugs in the early stages of development.

How to perform UAT?

• Business Requirements Analysis

You need to set up requirements and business objectives to achieve business goals. Test scenarios should be made based on Business Use Cases, Process Flow Diagrams, and System Requirements Specification (SRS). These documents ensure that test cases are aligned with your business requirements.

• Create UAT Plan with Assignments

Outline the proper UAT strategy. Create a team. Make sure that developers or functional testers are not part of QA team. It should consist of business users and sufficient time should be allocated along with entry and exit criteria, test scenarios and cases, and testing timelines.

• Identify Test Scenarios and Test Cases

Testing should be revolved around UI/UX concerns. For instance, check whether buttons, drop-downs, and sliders function properly. The test scenarios should be created with respect to the business requirements.

• Test Data Preparation

Test data plays a critical role in delivering accurate test results. It is recommended that data like production should be used to execute testing.

• Run the Tests and Track the Results

Execute test cases and report any bug to the development team.

Conclusion

Bug reporting and cohesive communication is considered as the key to success. It is recommended that you should bring in a quality assurance framework to make the UAT testing process seamless. Opkey is a software quality lifecycle management platform that can help you with UAT. From record and playback engine, ticket management system to No-Code automation, Opkey has everything to support your testing process.