Comprehensive Guide on Enterprise Application Testing

In this growing digital market, enterprise application testing is integral to running a business profitably. Therefore, the applications must undergo comprehensive testing before deployment for public usage. Given the complexity of these applications and the cross-platform and cross-device compatibility required, automation is the only way for organizations to execute reliable and extensive Enterprise Application testing.

What is an Enterprise Application (EA)?

An enterprise application is a software system platform designed to operate on a large scale, especially in a corporate environment such as a business, school district, Non-profit organization, or government. 

It is a critical component of any computer-based information system. There are various enterprise applications, each with its unique set of tools and functions to perform a task. Businesses can use enterprise applications to boost productivity, minimize human intervention, and optimize operational efficiency through automation. This enables companies to scale without any worry about outgrowing traditional management methods.

Enterprise applications can be broken down into the below characteristics:

1. Complex in nature.
2. Scalable.
3. Component-based.
4. Mission-critical in nature.
5. Used to manage business processes in a distributed environment.
6. Developed using enterprise architecture.

Types of Enterprise Applications

1. Customer Relationship Management
2. Supply Chain Management (SCM)
3. Enterprise Resouce Planning (ERP)
4. Payroll Management Systems 
5. Email Systems
6. Human Resource Management Systems
7. Marketing and Sales Management Systems
8. Incident Management Systems
9. Project and Portfolio Management Systems

What Is Enterprise Application Testing and Why Is It Important?

Enterprise Application Testing is a critical aspect for any business to run smoothly. To ensure business processes keep running, testers must replicate the work the users perform across multiple applications and ensure that none of those workflows are impacted when any applications are updated. Enterprise applications include databases, servers, operating systems, storage, networking, management tools, backup software, etc. This means the tests must work seamlessly across these multiple components. This makes enterprise applications harder to execute due to the process complexities and transaction data density. Hence, it is crucial that they are tested as efficiently as possible, along with ensuring that the infrastructure can deliver the expected performance, security, and reliability.

Enterprise Application Testing Types

Since Enterprise applications contain a network of components tied together, the following types of testing must be performed on them:

• Functional Testing: Functional testing is performed on Enterprise Applications to ensure that the Application fully complies with its functional requirements. It is performed in different granularity levels and consists of the following:
• Unit Testing: Individual units or components of the application are tested here. It ensures that each and every module of the application is working correctly.
• Integration Testing: Individual units or components are combined together here and tested as a group. It ensures that the communication and data sharing between these components are flawless without any faults.

• Smoke Testing: This is done after the release of each build to ensure that software stability is intact and not facing any anomalies. It ensures that the basic functionalities of the system work.
• Sanity Testing: This is usually done after smoke testing. It verifies that every major application functionality works perfectly, both by itself and in combination with other elements.
• Regression Testing: This testing ensures that the application functions smoothly after introducing changes to the software. Regression testing can be automated to ensure that the new upgrades to the application do not break the functioning of an existing application.
• User Acceptance Testing: Its the final phase of testing, which is done by the clients to ensure that the application works as per the requirements before releasing it to the market or in the production environment.
• API Testing: API is a computing interface that enables communication and data exchange between two or more software systems. API testing validates the APIs being used in the Enterprise Applications. It checks the programming interface’s functionality, reliability, performance, and security.
• Compatibility Testing: This is a non-functional testing that checks whether your Enterprise Application can run on different hardware, operating systems, applications, browsers, networks, versions, or Mobile devices. Given the device fragmentation, it is crucial to test your application for cross device compatibility. BrowserStack allows you to perform manual and automation tests on different browsers, devices, and operating systems. You can run Selenium,  Playwright,  Puppeteer, Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest seamlessly on 3000+ devices and browsers.

Perform Compatibility Tests now

• Database Testing: This testing is used for analyzing the tables, schema, triggers, etc of the database under the test of your Enterprise Application. It also assesses data consistency and integrity, including creating difficult queries to perform load and stress test the database and reviewing its responsiveness.

• Security Testing: Security testing in Enterprise Application ensures that system threats are identified, potential system vulnerabilities are uncovered, every possible security risk in the system is detected, and security problems are fixed through coding
• Performance Testing: This is a non-functional software testing that determines how the stability, speed, scalability, and responsiveness of an Enterprise application holds up under a given workload.
• Visual Testing: Visual tests help generate and compare snapshots from different devices and browsers to detect pixel changes. This helps identify UI changes when the app or website is accessed from different devices or browsers. 

• Deployment / Installation Testing: Deployment testing of Enterprise Applications is performed by simulating the user environment and then installing on platforms like the end user.
• Recovery and Fail-over Testing: This test ensures that the system or application recovers to the last stable state after a fail-over. Hence, preparing an effective bug report for effective Bug fixing is always advisable.

Advantages of Enterprise Application testing

• High-Quality software is developed
• Delivery of what is expected
• Faster Installation
• Quicker Launch to market
• High Load Tolerance
• Better User Interaction
• Consistent Performance
• Faster failover during interruptions
• Reliable Integrity and Authentication
• Higher Security assurance
• Compatible on different hardware/software configurations

Challenge of testing in a B2B Enterprise Application

B2B customers have high expectations from the applications they use. They rely on them for their business functions or day-to-day jobs. Hence, Enterprise Applications need to be excellent in all departments. While new technologies are bringing numerous possibilities, the problems they pose are also fresh; therefore, they need to be based on the most innovative and up-to-date solutions.

Top Management Consent: Testing with automation takes a lot of effort to include test cases to develop the best test strategy. Since enterprise applications have high stakes, all stakeholders’ consent must be sought out. This is because, in some situations, testing may impact the time taken to market the product. 

Therefore, top management should clearly communicate test coverage, functionality, security, etc. The best method to get a ‘go’ signal from them is to present them with the actual numbers and then put on the facts before them.

Usage of the Right Tools: Automation testing is fun and enjoyable if you use the right tools. If not, it could turn into a complete mess, and the whole application could be ruined. If the application requires a focus on the functional aspect, you should pick a tool that can ensure your application’s functionality. Make sure it is compatible with the business objectives of the application. 

Test Automation Strategy: DevOps and Agile have made testing difficult and unpredictable. Therefore, once you have selected the appropriate tool, it is important to create a testing plan that is in line with your company’s objectives and vision. The key is concentrating on the riskiest feature that could fail when developing an automation testing plan. This will enable the team to recognize these failures’ dangers and their impact on the company.

The pursuit of quality is ongoing for any enterprise application since it is central to internal and customer-facing innovation. Hence, enterprises that recognize the importance of a modern testing approach aligned with business objectives stand to make significant gains. Best-in-class teams are seeing thousands of hours saved in testing, significantly fewer production defects, and a measurable reduction in costs.