Case Studies

Automated Testing Improves Release Efficiency for Insurance Processing Software Provider

This leading insurance processing solutions provider is the developer of an award-winning policy administration system that provides property/casualty insurance companies with a highly customizable system that provides a fully integrated Policy Administration, Billing and Claims solution.

Key Challenges

Each of the client’s customer solutions is built off of a base platform release. From there the system is highly configurable to each customer’s unique business needs. In an effort to provide the best product and services, the client felt it was important to get an objective view into the performance of the system’s base releases. In addition, the client wanted to streamline its regression testing approach without sacrificing adherence to its strict quality standards.

Planet Technology’s mission: Provide comprehensive performance/load testing on base releases and updates; streamline the regression testing process through comprehensive test automation; provide more visibility to the customer on testing results; and improve speed-to-market.

Solution

Planet Technology provided a team of three offshore QA resources to provide performance and automated functional script creation, execution and reporting. Daily calls were made on an as-needed basis with the client’s QA Manager and weekly status calls were conducted regularly with the customer’s internal IT staff. Planet Technology‘s team immediately got to work creating performance scripts for the client’s critical business workflows using NeoLoad.

Prior to Planet Technology‘s involvement, the client was performance testing five critical workflows as a baseline. Planet Technology created and began executing 18 new performance scripts covering the majority of the system’s critical workflows. Before releasing a new build, Planet Technology runs all 18 scripts and provides the client a comparison report that compares the performance against both the expected performance and the previous build.

“We believe that using a third party to provide performance, load and scale testing ensures that we have an objective evaluation of our product releases,” said the client’s president. “Our experience with Planet Technology goes back many years, so partnering with them on this initiative was an easy decision. Planet Technology understands our products and provides valuable feedback for our Development Managers to evaluate.”

In addition to performance testing, Planet Technology increased the amount of functional test cases that were automated. The client already had comprehensive functional test cases, but did not have the time or resources to automate them. Planet Technology automated 46 critical scripts for the base release and 42 scripts for individual customer releases using a data driven test automation approach. As a result, all of the client’s customers are benefiting from test automation on base releases, and some are even benefiting from automation in their own unique implementations.

Results

  • QA timeline for each release shortened from seven days down to three via automation
  • Increased number of performance scripts able to run for base releases
  • Improved transparency for current and prospective client system performance
  • Automated regression testing:
    • Enhanced productivity
    • Saved on resources
  • Dramatically improved speed-to-market for base releases, ongoing customer customizations, and upgrades without sacrificing any of their strict quality standards.

Technologies Used: Neoload | Selenium | C#

Photo Credit: Canva