Every business should have the means to innovate at pace, stand out from the competition and deliver what customers demand. But SAP systems don’t always have the flexibility needed in a fast-moving, increasingly digital marketplace. That’s where Basis Technologies’ DevOps and test automation platform comes in.
Integrated ERP applications like SAP were conceived with the idea that software could unlock value tied up in disconnected functional silos and manual processes. And it worked pretty well, for the most part. Most large companies now rely on some kind of ERP system to run their core businesses processes.
But there’s a problem. Those companies are not only large, they’re also complicated, which means their SAP systems have to be, too.
Unfortunately when it comes to software, the combination of large, complicated and business-critical all too often also means monolithic, slow and inflexible – especially when there’s a splash of unique technical architecture and tooling thrown in for good measure.
And that’s just not good enough in today’s digital economy. As new technology disrupts markets all over the globe, customer expectations skyrocket, and firms start to deal with whatever the new normal looks like in the wake of COVID-19, the companies that stand out from the pack will be the ones that are fast, adaptable and responsive. That can react quickly and efficiently enough to fight off new entrants in their market. Those whose business agility allows them to simply out-compete their peers.
That’s the kind of approach enterprise software needs to support in 2020. And when it comes to SAP, that’s where Basis Technologies can help.
Unlocking the Potential of SAP
At Basis Technologies we create automation technology that massively reduces the time and effort needed to execute SAP change and testing, allowing end users to drive greater business agility and accelerate transformation.
We believe that companies should have the freedom to change, and that this principle should apply as much to enterprise applications as to any other part of the business. Our DevOps and test automation platform is specifically engineered for SAP and helps businesses to unlock potential in SAP systems to create competitive advantage.
Supporting transformation and accelerating time to value
Our marketing-leading software automation platform consists of two products, ActiveControl and Testimony, that can be used individually or in combination to support faster, safer, more cost-effective delivery of SAP change.
This advanced technology eliminates error-prone manual effort and provides a level of governance, control and visibility that would otherwise be unrealistic at best, and perhaps completely unachievable. Over ninety percent of manual effort can commonly be removed from a typical change and release process, resulting in up to fifty times more frequent deployments and a huge decrease in system outages and downtime.
The net result is significantly faster time to value in SAP whatever the scale of the project, from ‘business as usual’ updates to major transformations like the move to S/4HANA.
DevOps and Continuous Delivery for SAP
Basis Technologies are the original pioneers of DevOps and CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) approach in SAP. We were the first to recognise that these important new approaches to software development and delivery – now relatively commonplace in many organisations – could deliver the same benefits to SAP teams if they had the right automation in place.
We set out to provide the tools that were needed, and today are recognised as leaders in the field of DevOps for SAP. An increasing number of SAP users like Ericsson, Interpublic Group and Columbia Sportswear are employing our solutions to help them move away from traditional SAP release cycles and towards an ‘on demand’ approach where change can deliver business value as soon as it’s been approved for deployment – not three months later after the next release window.
In fact, today the focus for many of our customers is moving beyond isolated SAP development and towards the idea of integrating SAP into enterprise-wide IT tool chains. For those organisations even daily SAP production deployments – while a big step forward – are no longer enough. Instead they’re looking for co-ordinated, automated cross-application change delivery through products like GitLab and Jenkins; an approach fully supported by ActiveControl.
Robotic Test Automation: A unique, script-less approach
Our solutions also address another huge challenge in SAP systems: regression testing. Always difficult to solve for, and often incorrectly treated as less important than ‘progressive’ testing of new code, regression testing is becoming an increasingly large problem as customers demand ever-faster rates of change. Organizations are faced with a choice: move fast in the knowledge that things will break, or move slowly and risk losing business to competitors.
Robotic Test Automation (RTA) technology – featured in our Testimony product – solves this dilemma by introducing a revolutionary new kind of server-side automation that eliminates the need for traditional test scripts and all the problems that go with them, from business process definition to maintenance. RTA can automatically generate a complete regression test library by recording any or all processes that take place in live ECC or S/4HANA systems over a specified period.
That not only cuts overall regression test times from weeks to days, it also means a dramatic improvement in coverage — typically from less than 30{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} to between 60 and 80{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}. More business process variants are validated, along with a level of deep technical interactions that would otherwise be simply impossible to test.
A Trusted Brand
With hundreds of cumulative years of SAP experience, the Basis Technologies team have been helping enterprises become more agile, innovative, and competitive since 1997. Many of the world’s leading brands, including some of the biggest users of SAP, trust our software to help them succeed in rapidly changing market conditions.
Get more information about the Basis Technologies DevOps and testing for SAP platform and get access to our featured resources including eBooks and videos.
Our platform is SAP Certified for use on both S/4HANA and ECC systems. If you’d like to know more about how it can give your company the freedom to change SAP safely, at high speed, visit www.basistechnologies.com.
This article is sponsored by Basis Technologies
