What is the value of EDI Test Automation?

Through this article we will gain a thorough understanding about the importance of EDI Automation Testing in the context of business organizations. Since data exchange via EDI transactions occurs frequently, they have developed into a crucial component of business processes and continue to be the preferred method of communication now. Therefore, the need of automation for this entire process has become a necessity rather than costly, time-consuming and error-prone manual process of testing EDI-based software applications.

Importance of EDI Test Automation Approach

EDI Automation Testing plays a crucial and important role in testing all EDI-based applications due to the following reasons: –

1) The preferred electronic document interchange format set for traders and business partners is known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). By reducing costs, increasing speed and accuracy as well as business efficiency, EDI provides a significant advantage to businesses. Multiple business documents, including purchase orders, shipping notifications, invoices, and more, can be exchanged using EDI. It also enables the electronic exchange of business papers between numerous organizations located in various nations.

2) Manual testing takes a lot of time and is extremely error-prone due to the complexity of the EDI requirements. The validation procedure is slowed considerably by the increasing volume of EDI. The procedure of manually creating mock-ups of transactional files is not error-proof and necessitates the involvement of a subject matter expert (SME) who is familiar with the dependencies and compliance requirements.

3) As EDI is used in more than 85% of all electronic business transactions. It is the perfect method for safely and swiftly exchanging business documents with anyone, anywhere. For managing these EDI problems, there are a variety of EDI-based applications easily available on the market. One of the best platforms for automating EDI transactions between trading partners and suppliers is Dell Bonomi.

Benefits of EDI Test Automation Approach

Due to the variety of advantages it provides, EDI automation approach is mostly employed in both large and small businesses. Following are some of the major advantages of using EDI Test Automation approach for business organizations: –

1) Implementing EDI automation approach contributes to a decrease in the use of manual work. This is truly a significant benefit for businesses because it not only lowers costs but also lessens testing team’s working efforts.

2) By using the EDI automation approach, it minimizes human involvement and lowers the possibility of human error. Additionally, this will enable the testing team to concentrate on tasks of a higher difficulty that can result in quicker production.

3) Businesses that use the EDI automation approach have faster response times, fewer errors, and use less paper. All of them significantly contribute to cutting costs and improving organization’s system effectiveness.

4) The businesses can be speed up with EDI automation. By removing problems like unreadable handwriting, deleted emails, etc., it helps to increase data flows, enhance data quality, and deliver speedier transactions. Additionally, EDI automation enhances the businesses reliability with one another.

One of the biggest benefits that EDI is providing for businesses, among the above mentioned reasons, is the amazing cost reduction. On the other hand, there are also some difficulties with EDI implementation as well, particularly when testing or validating EDI-based applications.

Let’s discuss the numerous testing challenges that are present in this approach.

Challenges of Testing EDI-based Applications

Here are some of the different challenges that are generally faced by test engineers while testing EDI-based applications: –

1) Sending every transaction and checking its outcome manually can be time-consuming and prone to mistakes when testing EDI-based apps. When the testers fail to accurately execute a variety of test cases, this situation gets far more serious. In addition to managing massive and complicated data sets, this frequently entails doing multi-layer testing or transaction validation.

2) For EDI-based applications, a wide variety of file types are used. A few examples of these formats are EDIFACT, X12, CSV, AS2, and TRADACOMS. An organization’s file formats sometimes may not be compatible with the systems of its partners, and vice versa. In this situation, finding a solution that validates data in numerous forms for the business or its partners will be a difficult task.

3) The network becomes more complex when a business coordinates with more shareholders, manufacturers, and suppliers as part of its trading. The business must be able to connect to its client systems and overcome a variety of obstacles that could come up when authenticating information exchange transactions.

4) Due to the intricate nature of the workflows, EDI-based application testing requires a significant amount of manpower. To reduce the amount of repetitive manual work and free up test engineers to concentrate on test analysis, EDI-based test automation services are required.

5) One of the major issues test engineers face is converting EDI files from the format of one or more trade partners to a common format utilized by the receiver. For an organization to be considered EDI compliant, it must satisfy all of the trading partner’s EDI requirements.

6) When a business uses an outdated system or application, it may face a number of difficulties, including the need for programmers to support the outdated system. Also, it can be challenging to understand the reports produced from outdated system, particularly if they come in different formats.

The Conclusion

Hence, from the above discussion, we can conclude this article by saying, it is crucial to address these difficulties and use EDI test automation skills to solve them. Only a very small number of businesses today are fully capable of testing EDI-based applications efficiently and giving businesses a competitive edge in the market.

For more information, visit our website at www.precisetestingsolution.com or call our office at 0120-368-3602. Also, you can send us an email at info@precisetestingsolution.com.

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