Ensuring a complex Oracle business transformation with robust QA & testing
SECTOR / INDUSTRY
CAPABILITIES FEATURED
Quality Assurance & Testing
CASE STUDY PDF
OVERVIEW
When a leading enterprise replaced its 20-year-old legacy system with a modern Oracle Cloud platform, it engaged Assurity Consulting for specialist quality assurance and test leadership.
The complex transformation included Oracle Fusion Cloud applications for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), alongside the Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) platform, requiring a robust approach to ensure a successful go-live. Assurity’s structured framework mapped tests to critical business requirements, giving stakeholders clear evidence to approve the launch.
KEY OUTCOMES
ABOUT THE CLIENT
The client is a leading enterprise that provides essential services to a vast customer base throughout New Zealand. Employing thousands of staff, the company is undertaking a significant business transformation to enhance its operational capabilities and decision-making processes.
THE CHALLENGE
Large organisations periodically undertake significant system transformations to remain competitive and meet evolving business demands. For this client, the Oracle business transformation was a strategic initiative, allowing the client to enhance and expand systemic processes and practices for their financial operations, procurement, and supplier management.
Before Assurity’s involvement, the initial phase of the project suffered from inadequate quality management processes, the absence of frameworks, and limited engagement with business stakeholders. The shortcomings in the quality assurance approach left business subject matter experts (SMEs), primarily with limited IT project experience, unsupported and overwhelmed. This led to a lack of confidence in the system after the initial phase. With the majority of the solution still to be delivered in a subsequent phase, the client recognised the need for stronger testing support to safeguard the project, enhance user adoption, and improve production performance. Recognising these risks, the client engaged Assurity as their preferred supplier in early 2024 to lead testing for the subsequent phase.
Assurity’s role included establishing a structured practice, rebuilding stakeholder confidence, and ensuring the system met critical business requirements. The overarching goal was to achieve a stable, scalable implementation capable of handling frequent updates – quarterly for ERP, bi-monthly for OIC, and monthly for EPM – while supporting the transition to a new operational model.
OUR SOLUTION
By matching the right capabilities for the client, their environment, and ways of working, Assurity was able to design and implement a comprehensive quality strategy tailored to the client’s needs, emphasising risk-based testing, robust stakeholder engagement, and the integration of Agile principles within a predominantly waterfall project structure. The engagement began with a dedicated Senior Test Manager, supported by specialist Quality Engineering professionals throughout the duration of the project, and a team of business SMEs, which was critical to the overall success of the project, balancing domain expertise with mature quality practices.
The approach commenced with a discovery phase to assess the project’s current state and identify gaps in existing testing practices. This work quickly revealed a lack of detailed solution exploration, which would make testing difficult and prolonged.
Concurrently, Assurity implemented a structured testing framework, which included:
- Requirements Mapping: Aligning test scenarios with critical business requirements to ensure comprehensive coverage of essential processes.
- Test Scenario Development: Creating detailed test cases and utilising tools for tracking execution and reporting metrics.
- Risk-Based Prioritisation: Concentrating testing efforts on high-value areas to maximise efficiency within tight timelines, such as six-week test cycles.
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Actively engaging SMEs for system validation against business processes, fostering ownership and building confidence.
Testing encompassed all Oracle Fusion modules (ERP, EPM, OIC), with a particular focus on inter-system data flows. Assurity also provided support for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Business Acceptance Testing (BAT), to prepare the wider business for the transformation. By applying Agile principles like iterative learning and scope reprioritisation, Assurity ensured the team could adapt to new insights discovered during testing, despite the project’s underlying waterfall structure.
RESULTS
With the strength of Assurity’s Quality Management and ways of working, it yielded significant positive outcomes for the client, enabling a smooth go-live without major disruptions. To date, month-end and year-end processes have been successfully completed, contributing to the system’s maturation and an increasingly confident user base.
While the initial post-go-live period was intensive, as is common in any enterprise software deployment, the system has since stabilised. Assurity continues to provide ongoing support for change management, vendor management, and release testing.
Key findings from the testing phases highlighted the critical need for clarity in requirements, with comprehensive testing proving essential for subject matter experts’ understanding of the software and its integration with business processes. Assurity’s hands-on guidance and metrics-driven reporting provided SMEs with the data necessary to build confidence in the go-live. For example, bug tracking and resolution metrics clearly demonstrated the system’s progressive stabilisation.
Assurity’s risk-based approach maximised quality efficiency, enabling the team to focus on critical areas despite time constraints. The Quality Management role extended beyond traditional testing, encompassing vendor oversight and release management, thereby ensuring the client could effectively operationalise the solution. The ongoing quality processes also highlighted the complexity of managing frequent updates across Oracle Fusion modules (quarterly for ERP, bi-monthly for OIC, monthly for EPM).
Ultimately, Assurity’s quality assurance services transformed the Oracle Fusion implementation, delivering a stable, business-aligned system that reliably supports critical operations along with thought leadership and continuous improvement.
