Numerous organizations across the globe bank on the Oracle E-Business Suite to run critical business operations. Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) is a robust tool and one of Oracle’s major product lines that offers an entire suite of benefits for organizations — from cutting costs to improving key performance indicators.

A robust enterprise management suite, Oracle EBS consists of SCM (Supply Chain Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). It follows a modular architecture and supports customizations. Hence, businesses leveraging the Oracle EBS suite can tailor it based on their unique business needs and seamlessly integrate it with other applications within their ecosystem.

The need for Oracle EBS testing

When it comes to Oracle E-Business Suite implementation, one size doesn’t fit all. Since EBS is not just software but a business process, enterprises adopting it must maintain and test it regularly.

The Oracle EBS Suite is generally configured to map to highly integrated and often complex business processes. Each configured suite is unique and hence must be tested thoroughly before going live. Many scenarios related to the Oracle EBS suite– such as new implementations, new modules, upgrades, patches, instance consolidations, and so on, make testing necessary.

Thorough testing is needed to ensure 100% quality implementation of the Oracle EBS infrastructure. Oracle also releases patches and upgrades of varying sizes and scope for performance optimization and bug fixing. While upgrading a patch, you need to determine whether the problem is fixed and whether the patch has not broken any existing functionality.

Challenges with Oracle EBS testing

Continuous updates

Oracle E-Business Suite is known for its regular updates, introducing numerous changes simultaneously. It can be challenging even for the most skilled testing professionals to keep up with this pace. Minor oversights and manual errors can result in costly downtime across the enterprise. 

End-to-end integrations

Oracle E-Business Suite integration with several dependent business processes and applications makes testing complex. After every update, end-to-end integration testing needs to be done to check if any business-critical processes have been affected, which can significantly delay the release cycle.

Poor test automation implementation plan

The complexities in Oracle require numerous changes in test scripts, resulting in testers spending considerably more time coding. Moreover, testing an Oracle EBS application requires more domain and technical knowledge and coding skills than most organizations have in-house.

Choosing metrics and KPIs

Because Oracle EBS is so far-reaching, it can be challenging to identify and test all relevant functionality and business scenarios. The need to test custom developments is understandable, but what else needs to be considered? How to ensure that the test scope is comprehensive yet not so broad that it will consume too much resource and time?

Oracle EBS testing – Best practices

The following best practices are recommended for successful Oracle EBS testing and quality assurance –

Formulating and optimizing test scenarios

Within most business processes, there are many scenarios or variations to what can occur. Perform a deep dive into your business processes and integrations to fully analyze and assess what needs to be tested and why. This will help formulate test scenarios accurately and optimize them efficiently. Failure to do so can lead to over-testing, wasting valuable time and money, or under-testing, which may expose the Oracle EBS implementation to risks.

Creating test data volume and variety

Test data is used to check if the Oracle EBS applications under test work as expected. It is also used to test the application’s limits or breaking points. A high volume and variety of test data can be created by conducting user surveys, doing performance audits, or tracking user activity over time. Additionally, engaging with a reliable testing partner can help with automatic test data management, which eliminates the guesswork in finding the right test data.

Test early and continuously

Testing early (or shift-left testing) is an efficient way to test and helps evade potential issues and bottlenecks down the road. Moreover, fixing a bug early in the development process is less expensive than when fixed later in the process. Testing continuously ensures that your Oracle EBS application is always working optimally and also helps keep pace with the continuous delivery model of Oracle updates. 

Leverage a no-code testing framework

No-code testing empowers business users, no matter their technical expertise, to contribute to testing. This is especially important for Oracle EBS applications, as the employees using these systems typically aren’t technically trained. With a no-code testing framework, the issue of test script writing and maintenance can be easily managed. This will help non-tech personnel to develop and deploy tests quickly.

Robust test automation solutions

One of the most important and recommended best practices when testing the Oracle EBS suite is to use a robust test automation solution. Oracle EBS test automation is less expensive, provides more significant risk reduction, and is far faster than manual testing, which empowers businesses to respond faster to evolving business needs. Since Oracle releases updates on fixed dates with very little time between releases, a robust test automation solution helps achieve high test coverage and require minimal coding to accelerate testing.

Conclusion

The complexity and customizability of Oracle EBS applications can make them hard to test. By following the above-mentioned best practices and leveraging scalable test automation solutions, organizations can meet the rigorous testing demands of the complex Oracle EBS environment and scale their Oracle EBS applications. As a leading software quality assurance and testing services provider, Testree offers comprehensive Oracle EBS Testing services. Learn how we help businesses maximize the ROI of their Oracle EBS applications with scalable test automation.