Eggplant For Point Of Sale Testing

By Author: abner hardens
Total Articles: 37
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According to TechNavio the global Point of Sale (POS) Software market will be worth $3.2 billion in 2014 growing at a CAGR of 6.4%. A key factor of this growth will be upgrading existing proprietary systems. A survey by Forrester states that most retailers change or upgrade their existing POS systems every seven years, the change may be due to technological changes or due to changes in business model. But the seven year cycle is about to end. Retailers are facing a huge pressure due to increasing competition, technological changes, growing customer demands, a shift in customer behavior and buying pattern and an unstable economy. Moreover the emergence of the NFC (Near Field Communications) technology is turning mobile phones into e-wallets.
All these factors are influencing the POS market, demanding POS software to become more flexible and adaptive to frequent changes in market conditions. To put it in simple words, POS systems are required to meet all expectations under tighter budget and time constrains. To realize it QA teams and testers are extending the possibilities of automated testing ...
... /b> to POS systems but due to certain inherent aspects of these systems difficulties are being encountered. Testing POS systems poses a different kind of challenge. Unlike other systems that can be tested with a single computer, POS applications are attached with peripherals like bar-code scanners, receipt printers, swipe readers and others. The peripheral devices require human intervention to function thus requiring the physical presence of the tester at all times. Moreover POS systems are usually linked with external systems such as CRM, E-commerce, Sales and Audit etc making the testing process complex.
POS applications are usually highly customized to meet retailer requirements making them inflexible and unable to support fast changes in technology. The irony lies in the fact that although customers are becoming tech savvy, relying more on mobile solutions and e-commerce platforms, POS applications used by retailers are unable to catch up with the change.
eggPlant, a GUI testing automated test tool has been helping the retail industry with its innovative automated testing capabilities. Capable of running in several environments and within the firewall of organizations eggPlant has been helping the retail sector in automated testing of POS terminals and migration and integration testing of POS applications with updated Customer Relationship Management (CRM), loyalty programs or other enterprise applications. eggPlant uses a black box approach to testing, which means rather than finding out the technical workings of an application it tries to find out the errors by visually comparing the output, making the process of testing extremely fast and accurate. Developed by TestPlant in their Boulder development centre, eggPlant is a robust test tool that uses image recognition and VNC technology to connect with applications in a non-invasive manner across a global network. The integrated command language “Sense Talk” is easy to use and can be used even by non-development users.
In the present day competitive landscape, POS systems if used judiciously can act as a key differentiator for retailers. Budget constraints, aggressive timelines and the ever changing demands of customers have pushed both retailers and manufacturers to develop systems that stand up to modern day business challenges. POS systems are being continuously customized to meet retailers’ demands, testing criterions are continuously becoming more stringent thus raising the bar for test tools capable of conducting automated GUI testing. Keeping in mind the dynamic business environment eggPlant has been developed to meet the standards of modern application testing.