Worksoft Certify Reviews

We primarily use it for ERP testing. SAP is the primary application for the client, which we test using Worksoft.

We use Worksoft Certify for end-to-end testing of packaged applications. We have applications, like SAP, connecting with third-party applications, such as Oracle Transportation Management and other web applications. We have these type of use cases implemented and they are working pretty well.

We also use this solutions for web UI testing of modern applications.

With one of our top clients based in the Midwest, we have around 2500 automation scripts. These are not like unit level scripts, they are like big scripts. Previously, our development time for a medium complexity script was approximately three to five days. Now, it has come down to one and a half to two days. 

The turn around time for getting the automation tester familiarized with the tool is very quick, as it doesn't have any coding. It is fairly simple to understand.

The Capture 2.0 feature is very impressive. When creating documentation and automation, it is pretty quick, depending upon the size of the process you're trying to automate or capture. It has brought down the documentation and scripting time by at least 50 percent. It works in the background. It captures only the SAP window, it is not capturing their other work left in the emails or some confidential work that they have on the system. It's pretty seamless. Because it has security, I don't see it getting hacked. It's also pretty stable and works well.

We're really hopeful for the mobile testing in Worksoft Certify going forward. 

I would rate the stability as a seven out of ten. If there is a test script I'm running five times, I have apprehension that it might not be successful five times. The tool might be slow in +xcel or the tool will not be able to identify the same object/property. 

I have never seen the tool crash before.

It is scalable.

We use technical support quite a lot. I would rate them as an eight out of ten. They're pretty responsive, but it takes a long time to get issues resolved.

We usually replace tools, the Micro Focus UFT, with Worksoft Certify.

For a user to install it, the product can be complex.

Make sure you involve Worksoft while you do the installation. Follow their recommendations, which are very important, from framing of fuller structure designs or choosing the right capacity for the server. Their box of recommendations are definitely required.

We have cut maintenance testing time by 30 to 35 percent.

The solutions has saved us money. If we were doing everything manually, it would be two and a half times the cost.

We have a long partnership with Worksoft.

We integrated this solution with Jenkins and Micro Focus ALM for continuous testing. While Jenkins integration went pretty smoothly, Micro Focus ALM initially had hiccups.

The primary use case is SAP applications and customized web-based applications. Now, the company is moving into Salesforce, which is something big for us.

I've worked on multiple projects and our customers are very happy using it. The company is also very happy with the tool. 

We have something called automatic processing in SAP. Previously, the company was doing it manually, which used to take hours to days. Now, we have a script that processes 200 to 300 orders per day.

Everything is integrated with SAP and the web, and it works smoothly. However, we are not yet using it for web UI testing.

• The ease of use.
• It is understandable.
• Everything is integrated.

The Capture 2.0 feature is good. Our clients like using it. It does not take long to create documentation. Once the client knows how to use it, they capture the steps, like a recording. They give it to us for putting on the best practices, and we give them back the results. Efficiency-wise, it is pretty good.

I am looking forward to a feature which will be available in the next release, version 11. The search feature, where you can search for any process that you have created. 

I would like BPP to have more filtering options during the report creation. This would make our customers happy.

The product is stable.

The technical support is very good. They are helpful and provide solutions on time and very quickly.

Our customers come up with their requirements, then we come up with a PoC for them. If it works and their happy, they go ahead with it. 

I work with customers for new implementations.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. There are a few packages that you need to install, then you have the tutorials which guide you on how to do it. It is that easy.

Our customers are saving money.

It saves us time: approximately 50 percent.

We have cut test maintenance time by 70 to 80 percent.

Experience working with the tool and explore the features of it, because I think the Worksoft Certify is the best and can do anything.

Primary use case is for SAP support testing.

People focus on what they actually want to test and define it in a more detailed way. It shines a light on what they are testing, along with the speed and adaptability.

• Reusability
• Scheduling ability
• The modularization of testing: It brings a more functional level, as opposed to the technical level.

A feature that I am looking forward to in version 11 is a search capability, where you can search within the script themselves for keywords. That will be really helpful.

More than five years.

It is stable from an application standpoint. Sometimes, there is complexity within the virtual machines that they run on, or the hardware, depending on the configuration that their client has setup. Sometimes, this is a bit of an issue to overcome, but I don't see this as a Worksoft Certify issue.

If done properly, it's very scalable. It creates automation which can be run from an SAP point of view. I can create automation which runs in any SAP environment that I want it to run in, as long as the UI is the same.

Their technical support is very good. They have different aspects of technical support:

• If you're standing up a project, they can be with you every step of the way. 
• When you just submit a ticket, they'll respond to you and get back to you within their service level agreement.

Worksoft Certify's codeless scripting appeals along with the use of the Capture feature which helps in those initial phases. It also helps to translate the business requirements to the automation team. If there's a separate team, this is a little better too.

There is recognition in the industry that automation capabilities, like Worksoft Certify, create value for companies, as things are only getting harder and larger. Companies are integrating systems to try to align their processes.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. The team helps guide you. The technical support is there. It comes down to the training that's applied, and having the people who understand the use of the tool.

The typical range that we see is between 50 to 90 percent improvement in speed capabilities. Another aspect comes with the depth that they're able to test. It increases their capabilities overall to test at a broader level.

Our customers often evaluate Tricentis along with Worksoft.

From an Accenture point of view, our customer chose Worksoft because of our alliance with them. It's the capability that we've built and the knowledge base that we bring along with that.

Capture 2.0 is good for new implementations or new processes. It's not as useful when you get into more mature automation. Its documentation and automation are fairly straightforward.

There is a bit of a learning curve around the Worksoft Certify tool. The best practices, which are lined out by Worksoft, as long as those are followed, then this leads you to understanding the tool and using it in a proper way. If you don't get started off on the right foot, it will be hard to course correct. So, it is vital that they get started on the right foot and understand the best practices. The product's learning curve is relatively good.

Automation is only as good as the functional knowledge that is used in order to create it. This tool works extremely well. Manual testing and automation testing are two different animals. You have to look at automation in a different way. Simply taking manual scripts and automating them, and you're not going to get the full value out of a solution like Worksoft that you could if you were to rationalize the testing and come up with an automated approach.

When you're manually testing, it's about having the least number of clicks possible. Every click for a human is time. With automation, clicks don't cost anything. You might approach the testing in a different manner. It would take a human multiple times longer, but with automation, it makes sense not only from that specific test case point of view, but also from a reuse factor. When you're going to use a certain business process that you've created, then reuse it for different work streams.

We have been working on test automation for SAP-based platform for the last 15 years and leveraging Worksoft for SAP test automation in last 10 years. 

We have some fantastic use cases on how we can leverage Worksoft in large SAP transformation programs, especially for major global rollouts. If you look at some of the industries, like retail and logistics, we can see a lot of consolidation. When there is consolidation, we need to merge two SAP landscapes to a single landscape instance. It is a very complex transformation program. The testing is labor-intensive work in such a large scale IT landscape program. Worksoft has played a key role in delivering these complex integration programs on time, because we automated the core processes using Worksoft Certify. This helped us to automate the testing scenarios in new companies being integrated. At the same time, we test the existing company codes on the existing landscape to ensure that business as usual is not impacted.

If you look at the industry trend, the next six or seven years will be SAP S/4HANA migrations and adoptions of SAP cloud applications, whether it is SAP SuccessFactors, Ariba, or Fieldglass. We strongly believe that WorkSoft can play a pivotal role in delivering large-scale SAP S4 HANA programs since Worksoft can support the implementation of SAP cloud applications. We have delivered a couple of major SAP S/4HANA programs by leveraging Worksoft Certify. 

One of the key things that we have done is introduce test automation on day one in system integration testing (SIT). We don't want to wait until the program is over, then start the automation development. We start the automation right from the build phase, then we are able to deliver test automation on day one to the SIT.

If you look at the customer's experience, we have seen that if you take any testing engagement, whether it is large-scale system integration testing activities, UAT, or regression testing, and have seen that companies involve their business workforce to do lot of manual testing. Then, the business needs to take from the business critical activities and focus on testing. Worksoft significantly reduces the testing effort involved, so they can focus on their business critical activities. 

The company has been investing in a lot of new features. They are changing the trend in market demand, especially with their Worksoft Analyze features. These are important for customers when they have massive test case documentations. In addition, Worksoft is changing their direction towards Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

If you take any Robotic Process Automation, the key things you need are:

• The ability to automate SAP.
• The integrated software applications.
• Support for continuous testing or providing a platform to adopt DevOps.

I can see that Worksoft has been investing in these areas to make the product more relevant for SAP-centric platforms.

Another fantastic thing about Worksoft Certify is using it for end-to-end testing of packaged applications. We are able to automate, not just SAP, but the entire application ecosystem. If you take any company, SAP is the backbone, and if they use SAP ERP, then, there are multiple software applications, where some of them are SAP and some of them are non-SAP applications. Worksoft is one of the tools which can transcend across SAP and non-SAP applications. Non-SAP application include Java or .NET. Worksoft can seamlessly automate these applications.

If you take any ALM tool, Worksoft can be easily integrated, whether it is Micro Focus ALM or SAP Solution Manager. Another important thing is Worksoft's integration with SAP Solution Manager BPCA, this is helping customers to set up a risk-based testing platform. They can do impact assessment and identify test scripts to be tested based on the transports to be applied. Then, import that testing suite into Worksoft Certify and trigger the automation. We have seen that bi-directional integration between SAP solution manager and Worksoft Certify. This makes the product seamless, and if you take any company, they have their own ALM tool and the level of usage of Solution manager is varying. WIth the API that Worksoft provides, it can be easily integrated with the leading test management tools available in the market.

I would like Worksoft Certify to do automation at any layer (the UI layer, API layer, or database layer) and challenge competitors in the RPA industry, like UiPath and Automation Anywhere. 

A lot of customers are looking at testing, not just at the UI level, but testing the application or their ecosystem at the API layer. Worksoft could invest on testing on APIs. There are some open source tools available in market which do this, like SoapUI. 

The stability of the automation tool to run without any performance issues has improved with the use three-tier architecture. The three-tier architecture in Worksoft can help the customers access applications across globe. If global customers have geographically diverse teams, we recommend customers go with a three-tier architecture.

We have seen the customers starting their automation journey from zero test scripts to 8000 or 10,000 scripts. We have seen that Worksoft is able to scale up, then run thousands of test scripts concurrently and deliver value.

One of our customers has about 10 SAP applications with about 70 plus non-SAP applications. So, we automate approximately 80 SAP and non-SAP applications using Worksoft Certify.

A lot of our customers have used the technical support. Worksoft has a very good customer success team, as well as technical support team. When we started our first relationship with Worksoft, we had to build the integration between ALM and Worksoft Certify. So, Worksoft was agile enough to build that integration faster. We can see that the technical support team is fast enough to resolve some of the product bugs for any customer queries quickly. The team is open to build any type of new integrations to support the emerging tools available in the market.

As a partner, we help our customers to invest in the right tools and platform. So, we educate our customers to buy Worksoft Certify. We help them to build a business case or plan and do a joint PoC with Worksoft. We enable and empower our customers with enough details and help them to invest in the right automation tool for SAP, which is Worksoft Certify.

Some of our customers do not have any tools in their landscape. In that case, it is easy to position Worksoft Certify. Other customers already have other automation tools in their landscape in which they are experiencing a lot of pain points with their automation tool. They invested a lot of money in their automation tools and framework, but they did not realize the benefits. Therefore, we help those customers move away from their existing tools to Worksoft Certify. If they decide to build on their existing tool and use Worksoft Certify, it's a very complicated decision. We need to build a very strong business case and we also need to help the customers to migrate the automation test suite.

Worksoft installation is straightforward. They have a dedicated team to support the customers during the initial installation. It doesn't take more than couple of days to complete the installation. A lot of our customers are very happy with the way Worksoft completes the initial installations. 

Also, the professional services offered by Worksoft to help the customer to set up the test automation best practices using Worksoft has been helping the customers to roll out enterprise wide automation using Worksoft Certify.

Worksoft Capture 2.0 can help our customers to accelerate their automation development at least 40 percent faster than any other commercial tools available in the market.

We have seen that the initial Worksoft implementation has helped our customers reduce their testing cycle time by 50 percent. With further continuous improvement, we have seen cycle time reduced up to 75 percent. That is the level of productivity achieved using Worksoft Certify.

If I compare Worksoft Certify with other script-based automation tools, the test maintenance is relatively faster. We save about 60 to 70 percent of the maintenance effort by using it because it's model-based and scriptless. This helps the business team and the automation testers to quickly identify the changes needed to be introduced in the automation scripts.

The typical value realization takes about six to 12 months based on the number of scripts and how often the customer wants to execute.

Worksoft can help you to select the right automation platform, then deliver value quickly.

Our customers evaluate three or four major products along with Worksoft: Micro Focus UFT, Tricentis Tosca, Testimony from Basis Technologies, and then some of open source tools. Some of the customers evaluate all the tools, and some of the customers pick one of the other tools along with Worksoft Certify to make their decision.

There are a lot of tools available in the market. However, if you take any automation project, the lead time to implement an automation solution is typically, painfully longer. It may not give the right return on investments. 

We could have gone with any commercial tools available in the market or open source tools, but going with Worksoft gave us a few advantages. We were able to deliver and implement automation two and a half times faster than any other automation tools. Then, if you look at the total cost of effort to build, maintain, and run the scripts in the customer landscape, it is phenomenally low compared to other tools in the market.

Worksoft gives you return on investment faster than its competitors. It will make your QA organization more agile and nimble.

We recommend our customers be very serious about automation and not to experiment with too many tools. Start with a small PoC or pilot. Involve their business team to articulate the value of what Worksoft can deliver, not just within the IT department, but also the business. 

Worksoft Certify has ease of use, ease of maintenance, and value realization. Automation is not just completing testing faster, it's about reducing production support incidents, after go-live or ongoing production support incidents. It's a collective total cost of ownership and all about delivering value to the IT operations team, IT project team, and the business team.

With Capture 2.0, we have seen the product evolve. Worksoft Capture 2.0 is helping our customers to accelerate automation development. Introducing automation around day one is only possible because of Capture 2.0. When we are in the build phase, we can capture the important screens, whether it is in SAP Fiori apps, the SAP GUI, or SAP cloud apps. During the development phase, we can start building the automation scripts, then start leveraging automation on day one in SIT.

Worksoft can support modern UIs quite easily, such as SAP Fiori and Oracle Fusion. If you look at the modern UIs, it is all about the customer experience, and we have seen that Worksoft can evaluate that modern user interface and ensure that the customer experience is delivered as expected.

The primary use case is more on SAP for automating all our manual business work, as well as doing regression testing. We do end-to-end regression testing on SAP.

The product has worked very well with SAP.

Worksoft is used for manual processes that needed to be automated. This has helped us make our processes be faster and more efficient because there are no manual interruptions or errors.

For my processes, Worksoft makes them faster when creating scripts.

Capture 2.0 is a very good feature, on which we can record very easily and get documentation generation and testing acceleration. 

The product had some UI issues. In the next release I heard the UI issues will be lifted up (version 11), I am excited about it because the product will have more UI features. We are thinking of upgrading our existing Worksoft Certify from 9 to 11, when it is released, as this will be good for the company and help all our users.

The stability is pretty good what I have used sofar with SAP

The scalability is good.

The technical support is pretty good. If you open a ticket, they are able to answer it within 24 hours. They are able to support us.

We previously did manually testing and used other tools. With Worksoft, we can more see the productivity and benefits that it provides. We can also do more testing, making easier for all the users. 

We used the Worksoft for the deployment. They came and helped us. We have a good relationship with them.

Worksoft Certify is an investment. We see value in it more than the money. We see value in it because the user can look at different aspects of testing and what they can do.

This solution has enabled us to automate in order to tremendously save time. Only first time when you are recording and creating the script will you spend some time with it, the rest of the time, you are just executing. If we do one manual process, it could take approximately two hours. The same process using Worksoft probably takes ten minutes.

It help cut test maintenance time too. An eight hour manually project using Worksoft can be done in an hour.

Worksoft is good for SAP to do your automation and testing.

We are not using it for web UI testing.

The primary use case is regression testing and test automation.

We use this solution for end-to-end testing of packaged applications, like SAP, ServiceNow, and some in-house web apps (which we built).

We have already found some defects using the test automation. 

One of the bigger value-adds that we had was extracting data from our warning systems to be inputted into our new learning system.

We automated because of the value. Our business users do a lot of regression testing. They often don't have the time when we need to get the testing done, so this frees them up to do more value-added work for the company.

• Speed, as far as getting tests completed on time. 
• Its ease of use and the value of that. It is a lot easier to maintain test scripts on Worksoft Certify than on other testing tools that we have had in the past.

We have had run ins with some bugs on Business Process Procedure (BPP) and Execution Manager. 

We also did upgrade Worksoft Certify recently to clear up some issues with server fogging.

More than five years.

It scales pretty well.

I would rate technical support as a seven out of ten. Sometimes, we end up going back and forth with Level 1 support. Usually, if we go back and forth, it is email most of the time, and sometimes it is once a day with 24-hour turnaround. We usually understand what they require and trying to give as much information as possible. We still need to tell them to kick it up to Level 2 support or at least have a meeting with them, so we can show them what is going on. Sometimes, it does get a little frustrating, but once we either have the meeting or get Level 2 support, the issue gets resolved pretty quickly.

We had and still use QuickTest Professional from Micro Focus a little bit, but we were approached back in 2008 about getting into Worksoft Certify.

We went with Worksoft Certify because of its ease of use. You don't have to know a scripting language, like with QuickTest Professional. Also, it has ease of maintenance.

The initial setup was not really complex, just a little. We did not understand the full setup; it was just confusing. We really didn't get a full explanation of how things connected together until we actually started to use it. Once, we start using it, things became much clearer.

During the initial deployment where we received execution suite, the necessary information was not really provided. However, it was a fast deployment. We had to meet some deadlines, so people just came in and did the installs, or helped us do the installs over the phone, then afterwards we realized how things were connected.

We used Worksoft for the deployment, who was very good.

We have seen ROI by being able to free up and give time back to the business for other value-added work.

In 2008, we evaluated SAP TAO. The person who came in to do the proof on concept wasn't able to get the test scenario working at all. He had three and a half days to do it, and he couldn't do it. When Worksoft came in, they had the same length of time and were able to get that one plus another one partially working in the same time frame.

Worksoft generally seems to want to make sure you are successful at what you are trying to do. I haven't come across an employee from Worksoft that isn't willing to help. A lot of times you do get that from other salespeople, and that is just not the case from what I have seen from Worksoft. 

The product has a lot of benefits as far as getting testing done. It gives you some value back.

The company is using it across our IT landscape on different projects. We use it to test web applications, SAP mainly. Right now, we're doing a big conversion project. The one that I am working on is a big conversion from an old mainframe system over to SAP. Thus, we are using it to automate all the UAT test cases.

We have also used it in other areas of the company for ServiceNow upgrades and general web design stuff.

For this SAP upgrade or implementation, the business users are creating building blocks in their areas, then they're changing the building blocks into long end-to-end scripts to do a complete end-to-end testing to speed up the UAT. It definitely has a bigger coverage of UAT testing.

• It is user-friendly. We can give the tool to business users, and they're able to use the tool pretty efficiently without a whole lot of training. 
• The reporting features are nice. 
• It is easy to take someone else's work and manipulate it to use yourself. 
  
• It is not heavily code-based, so you can pick it up and automate very quickly.

For Execution Manager, I would like it to be more robust interface and be able to view the remote machines full screen instead of a little window. This would be a great upgrade for us.

I would also like more customized reports without having to print out big reports.

It is a very stable product. When we have had upgrades, it's been pretty seamless. Older versions of our scripts work in the newest update without a lot of rework.

It is very scalable with users. We have business users who are scripting. We have Worksoft developers who do more complicated work. Then, it moves over to the people who do execution and process through Execution Manager, so we have several different layers of users doing different tasks.

The technical support is very good. They are very responsive. When we have created tickets with them, there is usually a 24-hour turnaround time, then we are contacted back. Their interface is good for back and forth communication.

It is not practical to do manual testing anymore due to the volume of it. The amount of data variations is too great to test manually. If we were going to do it manually, we definitely would not have full coverage, where now we can get pretty close to full coverage on our tests.

When you are implementing Worksoft Certify, it is probably best to bring some Worksoft consultants in to help get you setup, and set it properly. Because if you don't get your initial systems, like your folder structures and your naming conventions, set at the beginning, there is a lot of rework to get it to work. We did have to go through that.

We save probably 50 percent of our time. The tool does what it's supposed to do, and we are able to actually work.

Worksoft Certify is a good product. The customer support is really helpful and supportive. They are always upgrading their products to new features, which we like. It is a pretty stable tool, which doesn't require a lot of maintenance.

Our environment has SAP Fiori. They are also doing a HANA implementation. As far as the web, I don't work on that side as much.

I haven't used the Capture 2.0 very much.

We use Worksoft Certify for testing and non-testing. 

• Under the testing umbrella, we use it for regression testing, disaster recovery, validations, and system refresh testing. This has been our main focus. 
• Recently, we have started getting more requests for more RPA-light type of work, which is not testing. It is using the same skills, process knowledge, and tool sets to do work that would replace manual repetitive tasks with automation.

We use Worksoft Certify for some basic ServiceNow functionality or Workday releases, weekly and quarterly releases. For SAP Hybris and ECC, we are also using it for our internal security protocol testing. So, we test Office 365 and Windows 10 compatibility. We test some Excel functionality and file sharing, as part of our security protocols. The most in-depth end-to-end testing that we have is in SAP.

We have done a lot of manual testing. We still do a lot of manual testing for our projects. We've eliminated a significant amount of manual testing with our system refresh, automation, and for technical upgrades where changes are known. However, for projects with new enhancements and functionality, we are having a slower time penetrating into them. With regression testing, we have completely replaced it with automation. 

Now, we are trying to shift as much as we can to start automating processes earlier in the project lifecycle, but it has still been a bit of a challenge. This is one of our stretch goals for this next year. The non-testing area is where we have had the most growth over the last six months.

The freshest example is some of the RPA-light activities that we have done. We have been able to save on a lot of manual work for some very highly skilled, expensive resources. This has been able to free up a significant amount of their time so they can spend more time on innovation and more creative, value-add activities. That's been one of the more rewarding things that we've done, and the most appreciated. 

We run our tests and our full suites every week. We have them scheduled in batches so certain sections of our scripts run every day, then we run them through the whole suite every week. That is how we maintain them by running and repairing them.

To run them every week and make repairs takes us maybe two hours. Because they are scheduled on batches to run, it's lights out. They are pretty hardened at this point, so there are not a lot of repairs for data, etc. If there is a break, it is usually because there has been a change to a process that we were not aware of. Our automated scripts are the company's best business process documentation, as we don't have a business process management tool. Therefore, if anybody wants to know about our business processes, they come to us for something like training or new production support resources. They will come and watch our automation if they want to understand how the systems work.

The ability to run multiple processes at the same time remotely or on a schedule. So, we have some testing that we do every day, and it is pretty much lights out. It is unmanned. We have some virtual machines that run on a schedule. Therefore, it's out of mind testing unless there is an issue. They are very hardened tests. If there is an issue, it means that there is something that we needed to catch, so it is always a good catch. This has given us a lot of flexibility because now we can use those resources in other ways. Besides the basic automation capability, it has been great having the ability to test multiple applications and multiple processes at the same time and overnight, then just receive the results.

I have always appreciated the Capture tool. I'm excited about the new enhancements that have been made to it. I think this will make adoption a lot easier because the tool is a lot easier to use and has more capability. I'm excited, because this is a good time for us as we are expanding into more RPA-light space. It will be easier if we could have some of our more technical resources doing a lot of this capture work. Then if they do something wrong, it's very intuitive to stop, delete that step, and start over. It will make adoption a lot better, and we'll get better requirements and processes documented that we can then convert into automation.

The time it takes users to document, then for us to automate, depends. We have a lot of end-to-end business processes, but they have to go across functional teams. They tend to get passed around a bit. Worksoft definitely saves time. We were literally getting processes on napkins. We didn't care how we got them as long as we got them. They would walk us through really fast, and they would try to show us. We were doing screenshots and trying to record them in WebEx. 

Since a lot of the business process owners are onshore and the developers for the automation are offshore. It was very challenging trying to find a time when they could get together. This product allows them to do the capture on their own time. It can be very quick. They just send it over, then they're done. They don't have to think about it anymore, and it's documented well enough that we then don't have to spend a lot of time coming back to them. It just makes the whole process more efficient.

I would like more reporting in analytics. There is a lot of manual work for us as program managers and test managers which has to do with supporting our value statements. E.g., if there is some way that we could systematically capture how long it is taking for automation processes to execute, then we could insert some notes as far as here is how long it took for them to do the manual capture. Then, we could calculate time saved and have a formula for savings. 

If they have some templates that we could all partner, there are a lot of customers who have created their own, but with the new companies coming onboard. Do they create them on their own or do they try to leverage the best practice within our customer community? There is more we can do here.

There are no issues so far. We haven't had any problems with the tool not being available for us when we need it. 

We had trouble with an upgrade once, but there was an immediate response on their side. We had a very technical resource who helped us get past it quickly. So, there has never been anything which has really stopped us from working.

Because we started early with the tool, it took us a while. I feel like we almost glued things together as our needs became more. The capability that was delivered by Worksoft was there. Therefore, there hasn't been a time when they have been behind me when I have needed something that wasn't available.

I am expecting it will the same in the RPA space. We will grow together because of our close partnership, and if there is a gap, I can work with them to figure out what the best approach is to close it. I think we will be able to stay with the tool for a long time because of its scalability.

I am aware that they have some challenges with some of their support resources, especially offshore which is very common. I don't think this is specifically a Worksoft issue. It always seems to be a software issue, and I know that Worksoft is aware of this and they are trying to make some improvements. 

If ever I need to escalate something, I never feel like I'm stopped. I always feel like there is another level where I can go and get support. We have never had an issue which has gone unresolved for a long time. We try to follow the process, but since our team is so experienced with the tool, if we can't fix it and their support can't fix it either. then it gets escalated up through the chain, getting somebody whose pretty senior with the tools to help us.

Our initial goal was regression testing. It was really expensive. It was throwaway work. We always had to outsource it. It overlapped other test cycles within a project. So, all the functional business folks were busy. It was something that if we left it up to the project resources, they didn't do a very good job with it. We would bring in manual testers almost literally off the street. They didn't know our processes. They ended up having to interact with our project resources anyway. It was just a mess. It was inefficient, clunky, expensive, and the quality was poor. 

We knew that we had a lot of SAP implementations coming up because we had acquired several new companies. So, we made the decision at that time that we needed to automate regression testing. That was our first initial goal, and we've hit that. During our last major SAP implementation project. Our regression coverage was at 90 percent which is pretty much the top you can ever really expect. Now, we are looking at other use cases.

The initial setup was a little rough in the beginning. It was so new for us. The whole idea of automation was new that trying to get the tool setup, internalizing all the best practice training and everything that came so quickly, was a lot to try to digest. Thus, we ended up asking if we could spread the mentoring out across a few months. This seemed to work better for us.

We purchased the software, then we found a vendor on our own to help us with the development.

It has saved us significant time. I have an entire dashboard that I use to showcase to everybody the amount of manual hours that we have saved and how that equates to dollars saving.

On our last big SAP implementation project, we inserted an automation resource into the beginning of the project. Between automating regression processes, data staging, and using our automation to help repair cutover and conversion issues, we saved the project about $1,700,000.

Worksoft has paid for itself fives times over.

We evaluated Micro Focus UFT, Selenium, SAP CBTA, and Worksoft.

My main focus was an SAP automation solution, and Worksoft was really good in that space. They were an SAP partner, but I recognized that I wanted something to be more scalable across other applications, and that ruled out the SAP solution. We liked the price point of Selenium and some of the open source tools, but there are risks to something like that. You don't have as much control, and there are always security concerns. Our internal teams weren't excited about that, as they are not great with SAP. We already had a lot of pain points with UFT. It took way too long to develop processes with UFT. It required more coding.

I would recommend taking a slower, organic approach to automation. It is hard to insert ourselves into the projects. The functional resources, business resources, and process owners don't have a lot of time for us. They don't see the value initially. It is overhead for them and more work. So, you have to bite off small chunks. Show the value, then build up the trust. If you try to be too aggressive and force something down everybody's throats, they will barf.

If you have super strong executive support and it's a top-down, e.g., the CIO says, "You will do this or else." You may be successful. However, in that scenario, your failures will be noticed and made very public. If you take a slow organic approach, where you're just trying to be really helpful and free up time, doing little favors here and there, you build up confidence. Then, people support you more for your success.

Start with the low hanging fruit for the value. Build it up. Once you get a bit more expertise, then start tackling the more complex processes.

Worksoft is a great supplier to work with. They have never pushed back when we have had issues or questions. They have always been available to help us. They put us in touch with other customers that have done something similar to what we were looking to do. They set up user groups by region so we could get together. They facilitate a lot of good discussions. That's why I mentioned we continue to grow together: customers and suppliers. It's just been a great relationship. We don't get that with every vendor. So, when we have it we appreciate it.

It has been very easy to use, but I don't think every automation tool is for everyone. I don't think just anybody off the street can come in and use it. Maybe for some basic stuff, but if you really want to maximize the use of the tool, you need some folks who are really experts in it. 

We were able to really grow when we hit that inflection point: When we transitioned to a different vendor that we had doing our automation development. They were experts in the tool. That was when we started being able to deliver these creative solutions. That was when we were able to see the cost per automated script go down, because they were able to develop so much faster.

While it can be used by everyone on the surface level or to capture the business processes, to get more return on your investment, you have experienced resources using it.