Roq Increases Oracle ERP Speed of Change for offshore deep-water drilling contractor

The Client 

The Client is an offshore deep-water drilling contractor that provides worldwide drilling services to the oil and gas industry. The company operates semi-submersibles, jack-ups and drill ships.

They had limited testing processes and skills, with most testing undertaken by business users over weekends. They required an improved approach to testing to reduce the impact on staff, to enable much speedier validation of third-party changes, and to help establish a more robust infrastructure. The Client also had the strategic aim to significantly reduce the costs associated with testing through the development of an automated testing solution. 

Roq’s Solution

Roq reviewed the Client’s technical landscape and identified that their ERP system - Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), was a prime candidate for test automation. After both open source and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) tools were investigated, Oracle Application Testing Suite (OATS) was identified as the most suitable test automation tool, and it was implemented by Roq to functionally test the EBS HR module (automating the entire ‘hire to retire’ process). Due to the improvements introduced with the automation of the testing of the EBS HR module, Roq went on to automate further EBS modules.

Working from their UK Test Lab, Roq quickly developed the test automation framework. This included detailed defect reporting, which had been identified as a key deliverable. Once the framework was created, Roq worked closely with the Client’s business users (located in Liverpool and London), to understand their specific process flows and then created test scripts – overcoming the challenge of having little test collateral.

The automation framework and test scripts were delivered iteratively in batches, to enable the Client to realise a return on their investment as quickly as possible. Once completed, the test automation solution was handed over to the Client’s IT services partner to execute against new deployments. Roq also provides ongoing maintenance as required.

The Outcome  

The Client recognised significant benefits from engaging Roq to implement test automation, for example:

• Initially, the Client was paying two of their business users overtime on weekends to get through as much testing as possible – through Roq’s automated solution, they were able to run the tests overnight and provided full coverage – validating changes and identifying issues more than three times quicker

• This increased speed of change now supports them being able to move from weekly to daily releases; and

• Over time, this thorough validation reduced the number of overall defects in production, ensuring critical business processes operated as intended.

If you’d like to find out more about how Roq can support your business, please email us at ask@roq.co.uk.