How to improve your Workday HCM Integration testing
Workday’s ability to combine different systems and processes across organisations is what makes it a unique, scalable business solution. In addition, its ability to seamlessly integrate with third party Human Capital Management (HCM) systems allows users to make Workday work for them.
From pushing data to payroll providers, to pulling data in from external recruitment services, there are a broad range of systems that can integrate with Workday. As the core pillar of your organisation’s efficiency, it's crucial that all of these systems work together to deliver value and keep your business functioning.
How does change impact Workday HCM integrations?
Changes are necessary as your business grows and changes Workday to meet its needs. But, any changes made to Workday or its integrations can have unintended consequences and pose a risk to the organisation’s business-critical processes.
For example, third parties may release service patches which could alter the way they work with Workday or a Workday update may affect the data flowing into your payroll integration.
As business change is constant, teams will need to continuously test their Workday HCM integrations. This constant testing cycle is time-consuming and resource intensive, resulting in stretched teams, less test coverage and an increased risk of human error.
Optimising Workday HCM integrations testing
Reassessing how Workday HCM integration testing is carried out within your organisation can ensure you're getting the most out of the testing process, while reducing the risk to your business. Take a look at four steps below for advice on improving the way you test your Workday HCM integrations:
1. Prioritise integrations
When using a manual approach, the volume of testing means that a risk-based approach is necessary to achieve maximum test coverage with minimal resources. The first step is to prioritise your integration testing by identifying those integrations that pose the biggest risk to the wider organisation if they do not function correctly. This will allow you to minimise the impact of change on business-critical processes
2. Choose the right test data
The next step is identifying the data you need to drive the test scenarios. This could include types of workers such as full time, part time and contracted; locations; benefit plans; and cost centres. The correct data will allow you ensure that testing successfully identifies any issues as a result of configuration changes.
3. Tenant management
Careful management of your Workday environment is key during integration test events. Controlling tester or user access, what transactions are carried out, or any other changes which could skew the expected output of the integration is critical to a successful test event. Having a separate dedicated Workday tenant to run integrations is ideal. If that isn’t possible, then time-boxing access to the shared tenant is another effective way to manage this.
4. Harness automation
Using business processes, such as Hire, to prepare test data and conduct testing manually is time consuming but automation can make this process more efficient and more accurate.
With Kainos Smart Test you can automate your Workday HCM integrations testing regime from end to end. This means you can create the data you need consistently and repeatedly and compare inputs and outputs. Beyond testing data, Smart Test can actually validate the structure of the integration itself to ensure nothing is left to chance. Automation enhances and simplifies end-to-end integration testing, ensuring that your integrations always work as they should and your teams can always focus on their roles.