How quickly can you find out what tests you last ran on your Infor environment – and how they went? If you’re like other companies we’ve spoken to recently, your answer will probably be one of the following:
- “Well, I found it, but it took ages.”
- “I found the tests we took, but can’t see the results or how they were followed up.”
- “I know that everything was fine, but I can’t see the detail of what tests we ran.”
- “Find what now?”
For a variety of reasons, organizations using Infor are more interested than ever in having an instantly available and easy-to-navigate audit trail of their software testing. In this blog, we’ll briefly recap those reasons – and give you a way to create that audit trail, while also improving the quality and speed of your testing cycles.
3 reasons why software testing audit trails are important
1: Cloudsuite migration = more testing
Many of you will be considering migrating to Cloudsuite in the near future – and that move will change your testing regime forever. As we’ve discussed in other blogs, apart from the big chunk of testing that the migration itself will bring, Cloudsuite’s strategy is to continually improve the system with new updates – all of which will need testing.
As the volume of testing your team does increases rapidly, it will become much harder to track what’s going on – making an audit trail vital for ensuring nothing gets missed.
2: Regulatory pressure
No matter which industry your organization operates in, regulations around software testing are either a fact of life or soon will be. 21CFR Part 11 has already been implemented in the US, and the FCA looks likely to introduce new software validation requirements for financial services companies in the UK.
Quite apart from it being the right thing to do for your business, creating an audit trail is likely to become a regulatory requirement for you soon, if it isn’t already. If you don’t have one, you could be opening yourself up to fines and other consequences.
3: It improves the quality of your testing
An audit trail allows you to review what happened last time you ran your tests – so, if there were any issues, you can start to diagnose them and improve your processes for next time. Plus, if your audit trail is comprehensive, you can use it for root cause analysis should any of your tests fail.
The reason why it’s hard to keep an audit trail of Infor software testing
The main challenge with maintaining an audit trail is the way most organizations conduct software testing in the first place. Most of the companies we speak to don’t have a formalized system to contain everything, instead relying on emails, spreadsheets, and screenshots of issues. A spreadsheet might be a good record of what tests were done and whether they were pass/fail (assuming you’ve got the right version and it’s been kept up to date), but they often won’t tell you much more than that. You probably won’t know how many times a process was tested before passing, for instance, and if you want to see the specific test results and feedback you’ll have to start piecing together emails.
How to create a full audit trail for Infor testing? Try Original Software
OK, that does sound a little braggy – but we’ve done our research and there really are very few software testing solutions that give you such a complete and accessible audit trail.
Original Software provides you with a dedicated software testing platform – which is what makes the audit trail possible. By keeping everything to do with testing in place, including automated test scripts, manual test instructions, test management, and feedback, Original Software can track everything that happens before, during, and after a test.
With Original software, test managers can quickly find out information including:
- Was a specific test completed? If so, what were the results?
- What feedback came from a test? Was it actioned?
- Has the fixed software been retested?
- Who was involved in each test – the manager, the person conducting the test, or even the dev who implemented the feedback?
This means that if you are ever audited, you can effortlessly demonstrate proof of testing and proof of process.
Better testing included as standard
f you’re reading this blog, then audit trails are probably your top priority when it comes to testing – but it’s worth pointing out that using Original Software to get that audit trail also makes your testing better and faster. Because it’s a dedicated testing tool, Original Software brings structure to your software testing that unlocks a number of benefits:
- Simpler test management speeds up test cycles, especially for UAT and other manual testing stages.
- Feedback is easier to understand, making bug fixing more effective and improving the quality of your testing.
- Effortless process documentation means you can be confident you don’t miss any important tests.
Shall we talk?
Hopefully, this blog has shown you how Original Software makes it easy and painless to create an audit trail that gives you complete “egg-to-plate” visibility into your software testing (to borrow a phrase that’s popular with food and beverage Infor users).
In fact, we have a case study here about a customer in a heavily regulated environment, talking about how valuable Original Software’s audit trail capabilities have been to their business. If you’d like to learn more about how we support organizations using Infor, click here. And, if you’d like to discuss implementing audit trails in your software testing processes, click here or below to get in touch.
“Original Software allowed a very straightforward audit when the financial auditors came in and reviewed the changes. Previously, it would have taken significantly more time to complete and reach the required level of confidence. It wouldn’t have been as pleasant.”
Aaron Sager
Director of Business Systems and Processes
