Assuring Inland Revenue’s shift to Oracle goes smoothly with QA & Testing.

Enterprise Support Services (ESS) is a NZ Government term for the internal core systems supporting daily operations and providing oversight and management of internal activities. ESS encompasses Human Capital Management (Human Resources), Finance, Enterprise Performance Management, Procurement and Recruitment.

With Oracle Cloud Applications selected for ESS, IR’s implementation provides a reference account for other agencies. “We started our ESS transformation on the basis that as a government agency, we don’t need any specialisation in our ERP systems,” explains Lara Ariell, Inland Revenue CFO. “That’s why we’ve used a common process model for back-office transformation, which can serve as a template for any other government agencies.”

System standardisation means the necessary testing which assures service quality prior to rollout can also be standardised. “The theory is that with software as a service configured to common processes, others can pick up and use our implementation and artifacts and get the same result. And that’s where Assurity comes in; they have worked with us to create a set of use cases, test scripts, and other testing tools to get our system up and running. We know these artifacts work, which means other agencies don’t have to invest in creating these assets again.”

IR’s ESS systems integrate extensively with internal and external applications, interfacing with multiple other solutions. As a result, a key challenge in replacing incumbent systems with Oracle Cloud Applications is testing every system with which it integrates.

“ESS is the glue that holds an organisation together, and you know your ESS is performing when you don’t notice it. We wanted to be sure of this outcome, and testing is essential to ensuring information flows as it should,” says Ariell.

She adds that testing must span integrations and applications, considering IR’s commitment to providing its employees with ‘work anywhere’ functionality. “No one teaches you how to use a smartphone because it’s obvious. We wanted our applications to be that intuitive so we don’t have to invest in training continually – and a big part of that is investing in testing at the front end. That tells you quickly if you’re on the right track.”