The speed of business and innovation continues to increase and organizations are continually seeking ways to keep pace. The move to S/4HANA is a highly complex migration that can be overwhelming, but it’s also an opportunity to transform systems and business processes. That’s why many are turning to test automation to smooth their migrations by reducing error and increasing efficiency. 

When Finnish forest industry leader UPM decided to make their move to SAP S/4HANA, they sought a trusted automation partner with deep SAP expertise. They had attempted to utilize test automation before and it had not gone well. This time, they wanted to ensure they were able to reduce cost and error while smoothing their migration. 

They chose the Worksoft Connective Automation Platform for its capabilities to increase testing speed and savings while reducing delays and error and driving consistency across their entire company. With over 18,000 employees and 54 production plants in 12 countries, as well as 12,500 customers worldwide, UPM knew they needed a partner they could rely on. At a recent UKISUG Digital Showcase, UPM’s Head of Testing Center of Excellence, Disa Tulonen, shared the benefits of choosing the Worksoft platform. 

Increase Testing Speed and Savings over Manual Testing

One of the highest priorities in implementing test automation is reducing the time spent on manual testing. With Worksoft’s automated testing, UPM was able to increase the speed and coverage of tests to support their digital transformation. 

“Testing manually is a huge effort that’s very time-consuming and many times in these transformation projects, we have a very fixed window time of where the testing needs to happen. With test automation, it’s possible to run a huge amount of tests.”

Drive Consistency with Reusable Test Scripts

The Worksoft platform enables users to build testing scripts that can be used and reused in various scenarios, which allows organizations to significantly speed testing while reducing error. And because the platform is codeless, any user can get set up on day one and see testing value and results. 

"Using test automation gives consistency and accuracy on how the test is done here because we are getting this increased speed in testing and manual time saved, we can then test more.” 

Around-the-Clock Coverage Drives Efficiency

As organizations aim to achieve widespread coverage to reduce errors to a minimum, many are finding test automation to be a highly effective solution. One significant benefit of test automation is that it can run at all hours, rather than only when the testing team is at the office. UPM was able to achieve improved coverage at all times through continuous testing. 

“Since manual testing only happens during office hours, remote automated regression testing can be central to running tests during weekends, during night times, outside office hours. This also increases the coverage and speed of testing and lowers the cost because you don’t need to have people sitting there on weekends doing testing.” 

Reduce Errors to a Minimum with Continuous Testing

Continuous testing within the Worksoft Connective Automation Platform enables organizations to cover all test environments and catch any discrepancies before they cause major disruption. UPM was able to identify and resolve defects as needed by running automated before, during, and after their migration to S/4HANA

“Another benefit of Worksoft is that it allows us to run tests continuously in the test environments, checking that nothing has got broken when we bring fixes during different testing phases, as well as after we go live in production, making sure that nothing gets broken."

Speed Digital Transformation with Test Automation

One of the key benefits of automation is reducing the time manual labor needs to spend on tedious tasks and freeing teams to work on more hands-on, complex work. UPM utilized Worksoft testing to build and rebuild their electronic invoices during migration and was able to significantly reduce their manual effort. 

“Doing twenty electronic invoices manually, that process would take around 30-40 minutes each time. But when you have a script doing the same work for you, the invoices can be generated, in our case, within one or two minutes.” 

Futureproof Your Organization for Ongoing Change

Any organization undergoing a large-scale migration knows that moving to a new system is only the beginning. With new updates both major and minor always in progress or on the horizon, businesses need an automation partner that they can continue to count on after migration. UPM realizes this, which is why they continue to utilize Worksoft test automation. 

“Thinking about the future, the manual testing need is growing for us exponentially. But the number of manual testers is not going to scale. However, test automation can scale.”