How test automation can remove the need for hypercare for SAP Applications?

Published: 2021-10-13 05:18:42

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 was a huge wake-up call for business leaders to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. Of course, SAP users lead the opportunity by migrating to SAP S/4HANA and moving SAP solution workloads to the cloud. And this change never stops as S/4HANA promises to unleash new innovations at an unprecedented pace.

OK, let me ask you something: Is our traditional testing that comprises manual testing and the post-release “hypercare” periods are competent enough to handle these ongoing changes? Obviously not!

To keep up with this, you need a robust testing strategy tailored with Change Impact Analysis that gives the right post-go-live foundation and smooths the pathway of your digital journey. This is all about what we are going to talk about in this blog.

According to Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” a successful Hypercare requires more than a good Change Management strategy; it requires managing the risks around the unexpected.

<B>Why is the Hypercare phase considered a bottleneck to the organization’s productivity?</B>

Hypercare takes care of the ineffective pre-release practices immediately after the go-live of an SAP update.  Hypercare is an “all hands on” phase in which the company’s most expensive resources  (typically developers and key users) are on standby to fix emergency issues as they arise in production. A hypercare phase can last up to three months or more, but to be clear, these are issues that were not discovered in pre-release testing when they would have been significantly cheaper and easier to fix. Because hypercare phases are so common and expensive, some companies specialize in providing hypercare support to clients and it’s a separate business.

<B>OpKey Surge: Say no to “Hypercare” and Move into a Period of Innovation</B>

The timeline for hypercare which is usually 3-4 months slows down the delivery innovations. Months of hypercare after each update significantly reduces an organization’s pace for the release. An easy-to-use solution that is fast enough to keep up with modern SAP releases and does not require exhaustive key user testing is the need of the hour!

Yes, it’s OpKey’s AI-powered Change Impact Analysis that can completely simplify your pre-release testing. As the industry’s best <a href="https://www.opkey.com/sap-test-automation/">Change Impact Analysis solution for SAP applications </a>
, OpKey Surge helps organizations improve testing efficiency and obliterate the need for hypercare.


The OpKey Surge’s real-time Change Impact analysis quickly analyzes an SAP update and identifies exactly what needs to be tested during pre-release validations to avoid post-go-live issues.

<B>Identifies the right impacted object to test, thus helps to achieve 100% risk coverage for any SAP update.</B>

Generates a test plan that achieves 100% risk coverage using as few test cases as possible.
Provides intuitive reports and test results based on risk coverage, making release decisions easier and smarter.
So what OpKey’s predictive engine does to speed up your SAP updates-testing?

<B>Real-time Change Impact Analysis</B>

OpKey helps enterprises keep their business running during SAP transformations eliminating the need of hypercare by 90%.

<B>When it comes to testing SAP updates, organizations lean to either of these options:</B>

<B>Test Everything Approach</B>
Test Right Before Release+ Hypercare
Obviously, which doesn’t scale and the way to go really is:

<B>Efficient and Sufficient Testing</B>

Adequate testing with OpKey’s “hot spot” strategy based on detailed risk analysis automates quickly with the “Right tests” reduce your testing scope by 70%.

<B>Real-time Change Impact Analysis pinpoints exactly what needs to be tested before a release.</B> 

The analysis starts by identifying all of the objects in your SAP system that would be impacted by the changes in a custom or standard update. Using AI, it then factors in how these objects are actually being used in your system. This lets users understand which changes represent actual risks to your business. These are the “selected tests” to test because they are the sources of potential production defects. By identifying the selected tests, change impact analysis cuts the average test scope for a release by 80%. In other words, it gives you up to 100% risk reduction for only 20% of the effort.

This will be foremost in removing the need for hypercare after every go-live. By reducing test scopes and removing the need for hypercare, automating risk analysis can immediately improve the speed at which your teams release SAP updates. It also paves the way for even faster release cycles through test automation.

Contact us to see the benefits of <a href="https://www.opkey.com/"> OpKey </a> Surge. Not only in terms of ROI for a single update, but how using OpKey’s predictive engine can dramatically reduce the costs and time-to-value of your larger SAP projects.


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