Products
TestComplete
Headquartered in Ireland, CBE is one of the leading innovators in retail technology in Europe and the first choice for electronic point-of-sale solutions in Ireland and the UK. For over thirty years, the company has received recognition and awards from industry reviewers for keeping at the forefront of technological development in the PoS sector. With an internal research and development center staffed by an expert team of engineers, CBE is often first to innovate new developments that then become industry standards.
Business Need
As vendors that offer point-of-sale (PoS) operating systems and hardware components continuously innovate their offerings, CBE must ensure its client-facing PoS software solutions support the latest technologies. Otherwise, clients will not be able to fully leverage the benefits of CBE PoS features that make it easier to execute customer transactions more quickly.
“Making sure our technology works well with other technologies in the PoS device market is a key aspect of our value proposition,” says James Forde, the Software Director for CBE. “No matter how well our solutions perform, if they don’t fully leverage technologies from other vendors that we integrate with, we cannot optimize how well we meet the needs of our clients.”
In taking on this challenge, testing the user-interfaces of solutions is one the many key factors CBE must address. The company also needs to test the user-interfaces of back-office applications that integrate with the PoS solutions
In 2014, after utilizing Micro Focus Silk TestPartner for UI testing for several years, CBE discovered it would need to find a new UI testing tool. “We found out that the solution would no longer offer any new version-upgrades, which meant we would not be able to fully test how well our user-interfaces work with future new technologies,” Forde says. “The vendor did plan to change over to another UI testing solution, but we would have had to rebuild our 1,000+ UI testing scripts from scratch.”
Changing to another UI testing tool also meant CBE would have to rebuild all of its scripts. Forde thus wanted to make sure CBE chose a new partner that would continue to support and upgrade its UI testing tool well into the future.
Targeted Solution
“In looking at new UI testing solutions, we did not want to go through the UI test-rebuild process again in just a few years,” Forde says. “We wanted a long-term partnership, and where we have begun to consider moving some of our back-office applications to the cloud, we also needed a tool we could use for testing the UIs of both on-premise and cloud applications.”
CBE found the answer to its challenge in SmartBear TestComplete. The UI testing tool enables testers to build stable, scalable and easily-maintainable automated UI tests across any desktop, website or mobile app. The tests can be run across physical or virtual machines, and end users also have the option to tap into SmartBear’s on-demand cloud lab to execute tests across thousands of devices.
“The choice was fairly easy for us as we had previous history with SmartBear, having used Collaborator for all of our code QA review during the past few years,” Forde reveals. “Because our relationship with SmartBear is strong, and we know how hard they work to support and enhance their products, we decided to deploy TestComplete.”
Forde also considered IBM Rational ClearCase. But based on flexibility and favorable licensing costs, TestComplete proved to be the perfect fit.
“Currently, all our client and back-office applications function on-premises, so we rely on the TestComplete desktop UI testing module,” Forde says. “But we are now looking to move some of our back-office applications to the cloud—it’s nice to know TestComplete gives us the flexibility to keep using the same tool,” says Forde.
Benefits and Results
Changing-over the UI test scripts to TestComplete was straight-forward thanks to support from SmartBear throughout the process. The SmartBear product development team applied minor software adjustments along the way to configure TestComplete exactly as CBE required within its software development and testing lifecycle.
“We have our own way integrating testing with the development process,” Forde explains. “It’s nice when you work with software partner willing to adapt its software to fit your process rather than forcing you to adapt your process to fit their solution.”
With TestComplete deployed, CBE now more easily ensures user-interfaces work correctly with current as well as future PoS operating system releases and hardware components produced by other vendors. It’s particularly helpful that Forde’s team can run tests when UI architectures and object mappings change.
“By testing that our software user-interfaces keep pace with other new technologies, we can ensure we continue to meet the needs of our customers,” Forde emphasizes.
Another key benefit for CBE is the reporting capabilities that TestComplete provides. The reports come in handy particularly with HTML5 coding, which contains specific details on failures, the objects and the contents. TestComplete helps CBE compare images so the software development team can pinpoint issues quickly and fix them sooner.
Forde also appreciates that SmartBear has developed a migration roadmap for TestComplete. That means that future upgrades will go as smoothly as possible and test cases won’t have to be rebuilt again.
“The cloud is possibly looming for our client software as well,” says Forde. “TestComplete can help us in that area, particularly with browsers changing all the time. SmartBear keeps up with technological changes and is very proactive—which is a key reason why our joint-collaboration works so well.”
Business Challenges
- Ensure software user-interfaces continue to work optimally.
- Test user-interfaces with latest point-of-sale operating systems and hardware components from other vendors.
- Streamline the process for recreating 1,000+ UI test scripts from scratch.
- Improve upon ability to pinpoint causes of UI defects so they can be fixed more quickly.
SmartBear TestComplete
- Provides option to test user-interfaces of on-premise, cloud and mobile applications.
- Enables testers to build stable, scalable and easily-maintainable automated UI tests.
- Features favorable licensing costs.
- Creates strong vendor-customer relationship for facilitating on-going improvements.
Measurable Results
- Streamlines process for changing-over UI test scripts.
- Ensures user-interfaces work correctly with current as well as future vendor operating systems and hardware components.
- Facilitates running tests when UI architecture and object mappings change.
- Generates reports that quickly pinpoint UI defect causes.