Project Summary
A retailer in South Africa is upgrading its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to one of the world’s leading systems. Since ERP touches nearly every aspect of an organisation, such a change carries enormous business risk should the implementation fail. The client is cognizant of these risks and engaged Inspired Testing in a Talent Augmentation agreement to utilise its expert software testers who have exposure and experience in ERP systems.
Inspired Testing’s expertise and experience in testing these ERP systems before meant that our test professionals could immediately be onboarded onto the project by the client, without the need for a lengthy training period. The Test Analysts could immediately start contributing to test planning, control, analysis, design, implementation and execution. During this engagement, the Test Analysts will seamlessly slot into the client’s development teams.
An engagement model such as this allows the client access to Inspired Testing’s pool of software testing experts, and in this case, experts with experience in testing this particular ERP system. The cyclical and varied nature of software development and implementation makes it impractical for many clients such as this one to utilise in-house software testing staff or increase the size of its existing QA teams.
Company
Large South African Retailer
Industry
Retail
Location
South Africa
Solution
Talent Augmentation
Duration
12 Months
Team
5 x Test Analyst
Client Overview
The client is one of South Africa’s major retailers and has a global footprint, including in Africa and Europe. Within Southern Africa alone, it employs more than 4 500 staff across 2 500 retail stores and distribution centres. It offers grocery stores across ranging from value to competitive price points, liquor stores, building material stores, and pharmacies.
Problem statement
The client faced enormous risk during its implementation of a new ERP system. A botched implementation of enterprise software can lead to huge financial and business reputation losses. Software testing provides valuable information and identifies bugs in the system under test, which can minimise business risk. The client was in need of a combination of software testing skills and experience with the specific enterprise software to ensure that the consultant could slot into its development teams immediately and start contributing to the project, without the need for lengthy onboarding processes to become familiar with the ERP system under test. It required this service in a flexible model which would allow the consultant to off-board easily once services are no longer needed.
Solution
Inspired Testing provided a team of Test Analysts with extensive experience in the ERP system in a flexible agreement.
Before improvement
The client lacked sufficient in-house software testing expertise combined with experience with this particular ERP system, which exposed it to business and financial risk. Appointing permanent resources did not make business sense as the business need for this function would scale down again after the completion of this project.
After improvement
The Test Analysts could immediately start providing valuable experience and expertise with regard to testing the ERP system with only a minimal onboarding process.
Benefit to the client after implementation
Through Inspired Testing’s Talent Augmentation, the client was able to quickly and efficiently onboard a software test analyst with relevant ERP system experience for the duration of the project. The client did not have to recruit, onboard, or train the software test professionals which shortened the interaction significantly and increased the velocity of the implementation. Talent Augmentation allowed the client access to expertise without contracting in-house staff.
