ACS Healthcare Solutions

ACS Healthcare Solutions—a division of information services provider ACS—customizes technology solutions for healthcare organizations’ needs. MIDAS+,a product group within ACS Healthcare Solutions, develops hospital qualitymanagement, care management and physician credentialing software for 600hospitals in the United States.

Challenge

For several years, MIDAS+ used a testing application that allowedquality control analysts to run test cases by sending a formattedspreadsheet attachment to an e-mail script server.This server wouldrun the requested test case and e-mail the end results back to thesender. Over time, however, the system became unmanageable.

• Too high maintenance. As the application changed, maintenanceof existing tests required more work than any resulting valuereturned to the division. It was difficult to determine the existenceof tests and their states of completion.
• Only accommodated a few test case scripts.While the testingapplication worked well for the test cases it could accommodate,adding new tests was difficult.
• Too difficult to learn. Employee turnover always resulted intime-consuming relearning of and retraining on the software.The design of the e-mail engine and lack of documentationcontributed further to the unmanageability of the system.

Solution

In looking for a framework on which to organize, maintain and tracktest case processes, MIDAS+ discovered that the approach to theproblem wasn’t the issue—it was the tool.The division looked at otherspreadsheet-based solutions that put more emphasis on training thanon the product.After considering building its own test tool, MIDAS+discovered a solution that could address its needs: the Worksoft Certifyautomated testing solution.

MIDAS+ purchased three Worksoft Certify licenses, two of whichnow run on shared workstations. Opting for two days of user trainingand two days of interface training, the division then customized theinterface to work with its custom controls.

The system administrator used Worksoft Certify to write an initialcomprehensive test in only four days, versus two months coding timeestimated to complete the same test case in the prior automationtest tool. Eight people now use Worksoft Certify—one systemadministrator and seven testers. All have written tests in WorksoftCertify, with three of them coming up with new, creative uses—testing more than 800 ways to enter data, for example.

Results

Because Worksoft Certify stores tests as data, MIDAS+ can now focus on writing test cases rather than coding.Worksoft Certify also organizes and tracks tests and their status and either provides or eliminates the need for most of the division’s automated testing documentation. Benefits MIDAS+ has realized with Worksoft Certify include:

• Ease of use
• Minimal training
• Cost Savings
• More thorough, faster testing
• Shorter development cycles