Statoil Discovers High Octane Solution for Testing Complex SAP Apps

When Statoil, a Norwegian oil and gas company, completed its massive installation of SAP solutions, the company needed an automated testing solution that could test Web applications and integrate with the SAP extended Computer Aided Test Tool (eCATT) testing workbench.

Statoil exports crude oil to the U.S., gas to European distributors, heating oil and fuel to the private market in Scandinavia and aviation fuel to all major airlines in Northern Europe. As the business expanded internationally, Statoil looked for effective ways to implement strategies, and for ways of reducing the burden of developing custom applications. A couple of years ago, Statoil managers made a major, corporate-wide commitment to purchase SAP software solutions.

Statoil considers its investment in SAP solutions as an extremely valuable one. The solutions support business operations in many areas, and are a key tool used in implementing the corporate strategy for international expansion. The global system is run by the IT department, in Statoil's Shared Services division. To keep costs down, thorough application testing was imperative.

Using QACenter TestPartner as a component in our automatic testing process is definitely very important for us, to increase uptime and reduce maintenance costs. We're trying to do both things at the same time. —Kjetil Sakseide, SAP Quality Manager, Statoil

Compuware representatives approached Statoil's IT team with the perfect solution: QACenter TestPartner, a tool that tests SAP applications running in the SAPGUI HTML client and integrates with SAP eCATT. TestPartner, part of QACenter's automated testing suite, is an easy-to-implement functional testing tool that lets testers create repeatable tests using VBA, visual scripting technology and automatic scripting wizards. This means test assets are created quickly, easily and early in the development life cycle, resulting in more effective communication between developers, testers and managers.

After TestPartner demonstrations and a proof-of-concept workshop, the team was ready to take the next step. "We normally don't jump on the first thing that's offered, but we knew that TestPartner was the right tool, providing that kind of integration with SAP," says Kjetil Sakseide, SAP Quality Manager at Statoil.

Statoil is still implementing TestPartner, but Sakseide is already confident the tool will help Statoil's IT group meet its business goals. "Using QACenter TestPartner as a component in our automatic testing process is definitely very important for us, to increase uptime and reduce maintenance costs," says Sakseide. "We're trying to do both things at the same time."

Comprehensive Test Coverage

As more of Statoil's applications have become SAP solution-based, TestPartner has grown more essential, leading Statoil testers to build a test lab that combines the eCATT interface of the SAP Web Application Server and TestPartner.

The test lab allows for thorough testing of transactions that start in an SAP solution-based system and go to a Web application. "We combine the SAP eCATT test results with TestPartner results," says Brit Ravndal, who is responsible for automated testing of SAP applications at Statoil. "In some cases, we start with TestPartner and then we use SAP eCATT to check the results in the SAP solution."

Reduced Costs, Improved Resource Utilization

While Statoil is still in the early stages of implementing TestPartner, testers have already discovered the tool's Record feature and bitmap checks, which they plan to use on a weekly basis to test minor production maintenance fixes.

In addition, when customers request special enhancements that require intricate source code changes—that can affect source code of other business processes—Sakseide foresees using TestPartner and SAP eCATT to check the entire system and confirm all processes are functioning as they should.

The testing group also plans to use TestPartner's Record feature to create and run test scripts—just before performing technical upgrades of SAP solutions, which occur twice a year. The upgrades are a serious undertaking—involving 20 or 30 people manually testing about 160 large test scripts that contain detailed business processes.

It's extremely important that the system is finished testing and finalized before we do the upgrades," says Sakseide. Using the Record feature to record all of the business processes is expected to help the test team spot problem areas easily, and much faster than doing so manually.

"The value of automatic testing is that it tests critical processes in areas where you don't really expect to find many problems," says Sakseide. "We let the scripts do the job for us, and then we concentrate on the most important findings."

The bottom line? "With TestPartner, we won't need to use as many people on manual testing," says Sakseide.

Fast Problem Resolution

Sakseide is very pleased with the support his team receives from Compuware.

"Overall, we see the course of automatic testing in general to be very promising at Statoil. And we believe this will also be the case for TestPartner," says Sakseide.