Vodafone dials up test automation for SAP S/4HANA speed and innovation

Increasing the speed and efficiency of testing for one of the world’s 5 largest SAP S/4HANA implementations
At Vodafone, innovation never sleeps. Vodafone powers Europe’s largest 5G network and the world’s largest IoT network connecting over 100M devices ranging from smart metering to health solutions. It also built Africa’s largest payment platform and is rapidly expanding it to provide financial services. Its commitment to innovation made it an early adopter of SAP S/4HANA—achieving one of the world’s 5 largest SAP S/4HANA implementations in just 10 months.
There was one extreme outlier in its innovation strategy: software testing. The longstanding testing solution (HP/Micro Focus UFT) was holding the QA team back. For years, they had been battling a steep learning curve for defining test automation and a resource-intensive process for keeping it in sync with evolving applications. With a massive migration project, new SAP technologies that weren’t supported by their current testing solution, plus more (and faster) releases to keep up with, its quality leaders recognised that it was time for a new testing approach.
Vodafone faced the following challenges:
·        Script-based test automation involved a steep learning curve and required specialized resources
·        Unable to create the required scope of test automation on tight S/4HANA migration deadlines
·        Existing test automation solution did not support the latest SAP technologies (S/4HANA and cloud, Fiori, Concur, SuccessFactors) + SAP GUI
·        Application changes required tedious and resource-intensive test case maintenance
·        Complex application landscape: applications integrate with 500+ interfaces and 7 cloud providers
·        Lacked traceability from requirements, to test plans, to test results—making it difficult to assess overall release readiness
·        Substantial vendor assistance was required to fix problems—adding to delays and high costs
After an exhaustive requirements analysis and vetting process, Vodafone recognized that Tricentis—with its industry-leading SAP testing capabilities—would enable it to maximize the productivity and skillset of its QA team.
Tricentis’ model-based approach to test automation was key to this decision. It enables its testers to get up to speed rapidly (often in just a day) and create automated tests twice as fast as they could with their previous script-based solution. In less than a year, Vodafone advanced from a predominantly manual testing process with islands of automation to a continuous testing process that automatically verifies end-to-end business processes during each build.
According to Mahesh Shinde, Deputy General Manager at Vodafone, “We have a very diverse platform. SAP S/4HANA, Fiori, Concur, SuccessFactors, BAPI, web, mobile…you name it, it’s there at Vodafone. Tricentis provides a complete platform to test business processes across our entire application stack—not just what we have today, but also looking toward the future.”
Following Vodafone’s corporate commitment to innovation, the testing team is already thinking about taking its testing success to the next level. Automating testing across its many data imports, integrations, and transformations (with Tricentis Data Integrity) is already on its radar. So is change impact analysis: using Tricentis LiveCompare to analyse its SAP ecosystems and identify exactly which tests need to be executed to cover the risks in an SAP update.
Overview of results:
·        200% faster creation of automated test cases
·        440 days of working time saved within first year
·        Automated 81% of end-to-end functional testing
·        70% test automation across S/4HANA
·        Integrated continuous testing within CI/CD for immediate feedback
·        Migrated over 10K UFT tests to model-based test automation
·        Full replacement of HP/Micro Focus UFT
·        Centralized quality reporting increases stakeholder confidence in release decisions
·        Manual testers certified as test automation specialists
·        A “Community of Practice” to optimize and share expertise, best practices, and test automation resources