NBC’s Comedy-drama, ‘Superstore,’ aired a rather humorous take on retail mishaps a few years back. One of its lead characters, Jonah Simms, a floor worker at the giant shopping mart, is given the task of enforcing the 25 percent discount. But unfortunately, he makes a mistake while entering the formula, and instead of reducing the goods by 0.25, he reprices them!
Result – The mayhem at checkout with customers wanting LCD flatscreens and other pricey stuff at just 25 cents.
The point here is that a simple pricing glitch can be catastrophic and bring a whole retail store down to its knees. Software glitches in retail management systems aren’t uncommon, especially with manual intervention.
A survey by Qualitest shows software testing in the retail domain is necessary, given that 65% of the surveyed consumers are likely to abandon a purchase due to bugs or glitches in the checkout process.
This brings us to an important question:
An RMS is a complex software to help manage the inventory, workforce, finance & accounts, sales, deliveries, customer relationships and more.
Testing an RMS for quality assurance ensures that it can be used seamlessly both in retail stores and online e-commerce websites.
In the post-COVID age, where purchases made on PCs and smartphones account for a 75% of total sales, revenues are highly dependent on the impeccable quality, functionality, and performance of retail management systems.
Therefore, quality assurance is an absolute prerequisite to guaranteeing a good customer experience, being compliant with industry regulations and achieving a fault-free system.
Testing an RMS means understanding its inherent complexities, testing the interconnected functionalities, and the interoperability of its various customer-facing applications.
By automating quality assurance procedures such as functional, integration, performance, and cybersecurity testing, it eases the brunt of manual testers dealing with escalating test volumes. It speeds up the deployment pipeline to deliver trustworthy retail software especially when the following factors are at play:
With Covid related restrictions and regulations in place, retailers are constantly under pressure to be compliant and accommodate quick changes within the least possible time.
Emergencies such as early shut down of brick-and-mortar stores, panic buying, stockholding, etc., become binding on point-of-sale systems to be updated as early as possible. Therefore, automation is the key to enabling a faster release of reliable software in these circumstances.
RMS testing is not limited to a single device or a single platform. Automation enables better test coverage to include all types of devices and browsers.
Test automation guarantees a unified performance across all platforms and enables quicker feedback, allowing for faster time to market.
Retail is a cutthroat space. Customers have an unforgiving attitude towards brands with bad app/website UX, faulty payment gateways, and overall tardy technology. That makes it important to continuously test the digital offerings and do it at fast regular intervals to remain relevant.
With frequent releases and need to test across various devices, automation not just guarantees ROI in testing RMS, but also ensure steep savings in testing activities.
Test automation is a key to stay relevant in the ever-evolving retail landscape. While software testing is necessary to ensure the product works as expected and has zero faulty implementations, testing alone would not suffice; it is required to deliver quality solutions with speed.
The e-retail industry is steadily on the rise. With the frequent adoption of new digital technologies, developers are expected to accommodate changes on the fly. The continuous cycle of innovation in retail demands new functionalities to be tested, implemented, and rolled out in the least time possible. And this can only be done with the help of automation.
