Truugo provides tools for creating message implementation guidelines, performing conformance testing, setting up quality assurance routines, and reporting test results. This article explains what conformance testing means in our context and why investing in it is worthwhile.
Conformance Testing - What Does It Mean?
Conformance testing ensures that a process, product, or service meets defined requirements and standards, fulfilling its intended purpose. In electronic data interchange (EDI) between organizations, conformance testing helps ensure compatibility with data transfer protocols and message formats.
Truugo provides tools for testing the conformance with the underlying message format and its context-specific requirements. With Truugo, you can verify whether the transmitted data complies with the chosen syntax, message standard, and implementation guideline in terms of structure, content, and integrity.
Conformance testing is essential for process automation, including system integrations. Continuous testing demands a solution that covers manual and automated testing needs while being easy to implement for widespread use.
Why Should I Invest in It?
Process automation can significantly enhance business efficiency. However, neglecting data quality and conformance can make it counterproductive or even harmful. Data acts as the oil of the automated process - if its quality is poor, the engine will not run properly, requiring continuous monitoring and maintenance.
A common challenge in EDI involves system integrations perceived as time-consuming and expensive. Consequently, conformance testing may be minimal due to schedule and cost pressures, paradoxically leading to more costly production issues.
It is a common practice to have a copy of a production environment as a test environment to ensure the process flows as expected. However, if used alone, it usually has several deficiencies that cause extra delays and costs:
- lacks sensible feedback on errors
- reports only the first detected error
- does not provide feedback in real-time
- does not provide feedback on forthcoming requirements
- does not provide suggestions on how to improve data to ensure better automation
- does not have supplementary features for helping to locate and fix the errors
- can be used only after retrieving access rights
How to Justify the Investment?
Many companies having challenges with EDI costs have not invested enough in quality, starting from the message implementation guidelines. Is it possible to have well-functioning processes without proper documentation and tools for checking the conformance?
A crucial part of an efficient and high-quality operational model is the productization of message interfaces. Having repeatable deployments justifies investing in enhanced testing routines as part of the process. Although productization initially increases costs, long-term savings arise through more efficient deployments and fewer production issues.
Conformance testing becomes more efficient through self-service and automation. By enabling self-testing, you reduce scheduling issues and the burden of costly bilateral testing. Furthermore, you can seamlessly integrate conformance testing into application development and deployment processes using API interfaces.
How to Get the Biggest Benefits?
Most system integrations require a message transformation, converting source system data to the format supported by the target system. Providing conformance testing tools to the experts implementing the transformation helps to address many requirements during development, speeding up deployments.
During the deployments, providing the conformance testing as a self-test solution for trading partners helps speed up the process and allows for an increase in testing volumes without extra burden. After moving to production, automated feedback on conformance issues and tools for self-testing help keep the quality at the required level.
The sectors with the most potential for significant benefits include wholesale, logistics, health care, finance, and public services, each having tens, hundreds, or even thousands of repetitive integrations.
Why Should You Choose Truugo?
Truugo offers a comprehensive and well-thought-out solution for conformance testing. It combines testing and documentation, supports manual and automated testing, and provides easy-to-use testing tools for the end-users.
Combining testing and documentation ensures that tested requirements are always fully aligned with documented requirements, which is essential for an efficient operational model. Covering manual and automated testing needs with a single solution eliminates the need for parallel tools, reducing operational and training costs. User-friendly testing tools remove time-consuming bottlenecks, enabling a genuine self-service model for employees and trading partners.
Are you interested in hearing more? Contact us to arrange a demo session.
