Needing a scalable testing solution for its UKG implementation and ongoing operations, a leading Australia and New Zealand-based retailer sought a partner to support their in-house testing program. With over 50,000 team members across multiple countries, multiple award structures, and complex workforce configurations, the team faced a number of challenges that could jeopardize their ultimate goal of creating a world-class testing program that supports both their employees and bottom line.
The retailer faced several critical testing challenges across their complex operations:
Scale, Complexity, and Multi-Country Operations
The complexity of the testing was driven by over 50,000 team members across AU/NZ with different awards and regulations. They had multiple employment types, including retail, manufacturing, and drivers, and different configurations for each country and business unit.
Manual Testing Limitations
Despite team expertise, manual testing just wasn’t cutting it. Testing could take up to a week per story or bug fix. There was no ability to perform regression testing during implementations, and there were resource constraints with limited quality assurance staff.
Time Critical Requirements
The team needed to balance their focus on implementing new modules and hitting tight implementation deadlines with maintaining business as usual, and managing “pay critical” issues that required same-day testing and deployment.
Data Dependencies
The team was highly dependent on waiting for integration files before testing could begin, causing delays in creating test scenarios without proper test data.
With a team of testing experts on staff, the retailer decided to take a self-service approach to using workforce management testing software from TestAssure.
Independent Test Development
Th team trained quickly and began building complex test cases within weeks. They created comprehensive test coverage for timekeeping, advanced scheduling, and forecasting, and developed tests for multiple awards, EBAs, and country-specific configurations.
Automated Employee Creation
Thanks to the Persona feature within TestAssure, waiting for data was no longer a bottleneck for creating team members in the system.
Regression Testing Excellence
With a focus on creating a testing program that would support ongoing multi-country operations, the team relied on regression testing from TestAssure to maintain ongoing pay compliance. "Any configuration change, if you're doing any CRT change, any rules change, that means it may have an impact... regression has to be done, there's no way you can bypass it,” noted their team lead.
Cross-Country Validation
The ability to test AU changes while ensuring NZ configurations remain untouched was critical for the retailer’s multi-country operations.
With automated WFM testing support from TestAssure, the retailer’s in-house testing team was able to achieve their goal of creating a world-class testing program to support its UKG implementation and ongoing multi-country operations.
15,000+ Test Cases Built In-House
The retailer’s testing team independently built their entire test suite leveraging Test Builder and the Pre-Built Testing Library from TestAssure.
75% Time Reduction
Testing cycles reduced from 5 days to 1.5 days including scenario preparation, execution, and payroll review.
Zero Dependency on Employee Data
“We were not waiting for integration file,” noted the team lead, “TestAssure was creating employees by itself. That was a quick win."
Successful Multi-Project Implementations
With TestAssure, the team was able to manage testing for AU and NZ retail, operations, and distribution centers simultaneously.
Operational Efficiency
The team is now able to act quickly when issues inevitably arise, with immediate identification of configuration impacts across countries and confidence to deploy same-day fixes for critical issues.
Risk Mitigation
Likewise, this ability to catch "even a single or small failure" in pay codes within seconds is critical to supporting ongoing operational excellence and avoiding potentially costly correction costs down the line. It’s also easier to prevent cross-country configuration contamination. There’s also complete regression coverage, which was previously impossible with manual testing
ROI
With 26 testing cycles per year (bi-weekly), 24 hours saved per cycle (from 5 to 1.5 days, assuming 10 testers), this translates to potential annual labor savings of over $450,000, not to mention the time saved. This allowed the retailer’s QA team to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives rather than repetitive manual testing. Beyond cost savings, the investment protects against costly payroll errors and compliance issues across their 50,000+ employee workforce.
With a big goal of developing a world-class testing program to support its 50,000+ workforce, this ANZ-based retailer had a big challenge ahead of them. Between the dedication of the in-house testing team and automated WFM testing software from TestAssure, they were able to build a program that not only helped them navigate their UKG implementation, but helps maintain ongoing pay compliance across multiple countries.
The team has been so successful that upper management has recognized the value of testing so much they are planning to expand to cover all team members across Australia and New Zealand.
As the team looks forward into the future, they’re broadening their focus to expanding automation to business-as-usual ticket testing, making their system so stable that developers can run tests independently, and implementing regression testing for dynamic scheduling and forecasting.
"I'm expecting a lot from this tool. I know it has the capability, especially with timekeeping... timekeeping is where most of the issues happen."
- Team Lead
This ANZ-based retailer demonstrates that with the right tool and committed team, organizations can build world-class testing programs independently, proving that in-house excellence is achievable even with complex, multi-country operations.
Ready to have confidence in your configurations during your UKG implementation and maintain ongoing pay compliance? Talk to us about how TestAssure can help you build a scalable, automated testing program tailored to your workforce management journey.
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