SAP: How to Reduce Risk Efficiently (& Meet Your Compliance Requirements)

‘Reduce business risk’ is the #1 goal for most IT departments, according to the recent SAPinsider Benchmark Report. Also in the report, ‘meet compliance and audit needs’ came in at #4. 

Unfortunately, achieving these goals can be a slow and laborious process.

Modern SAP projects need to be fast and dynamic, with constant innovation. Inefficient risk mitigation and evidence capture will slow your release frequency and put a major blocker on innovation.

But luckily, this doesn’t have to be the case. You can efficiently reduce risk and meet your audit needs.

Why Reducing Risk is So Important

The SAPInsider report states that 61% of IT departments list ‘Reducing Business Risk’ as one of their main goals. This is understandable, with the cost of failure being so high. 

We’ve all heard horror stories of system failures. Airport check-in systems crashing, customers being unable to access bank accounts, booking and application portals freezing. These failures often linger long in the public memory, leaving a lasting negative impression.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Introducing a new software solution introduces risk to your business and not just on the customer facing front end.

As ERP is so comprehensive, defective SAP implementations add risks to your supply chain, manufacturing processes, customer support, HR, and payroll. It’s amazing how quickly employees’ opinions change if payroll is late. Even slipping pay a single day can have a detrimental effect. 

This risk needs to be mitigated wherever possible but doing so can add time to stretched project timelines.

What Else Can You Gain By Reducing Risk?

At a high level, reducing risk means your new software solution is less likely to compromise your business. There are also further benefits to be had.

Higher quality releases build business confidence in IT departments. In turn, this confidence fosters a ‘can do’ attitude to bolder software releases. Armed with a rigorous approach to risk mitigation, you can implement changes knowing you’ll see business benefits. You can then effect positive changes to user-experience, functionality, scope of operation. The list is virtually endless. All the while your reputation remains intact, or even improved.

The Relationship Between Testing, Risk and Audit

Risk coverage is directly linked to testing. The better you test, the more risk you can mitigate. As we’ve mentioned, reducing risk can introduce extra time into your projects. But it doesn’t have to.

Unfortunately, many companies still use primitive testing approaches. Essentially, they throw resources at testing, trying to test everything they can. Prioritization goes out the window. Executions are rushed through. Key business processes are missed and risk is allowed to slip through. 

Audit requirements further complicate matters. Certain industries require rigorous test evidence capture to satisfy regulatory requirements, while other companies just do it out of best practice.

Capturing test evidence can seem a trivial activity, until you try it.

If you’re testing manually, your testers need to take screenshots, name the images, store, and archive the images effectively, and somehow bind them to test runs. Needless to say, this is not a robust or rapid process.

How to Reduce Risk Efficiently & Meet Your Audit Needs

As we’ve mentioned throughout, there are ways to reduce business risk without slowing your project. 

Efficient and effective testing is the key to risk reduction and meeting your audit needs.  

With the right tools, you can accelerate test creation and execution. You can also prioritize your tests by business risk. With this approach, you know you’re always testing the most important processes first, and as quickly as possible. Even if your testing windows are reduced, you’ll be able to squeeze every drop of time out of them.

When it comes to SAP testing, Copado Robotic Testing offers the perfect solution. Copado Robotic Testing addresses these challenges better than any other SAP test tool. It accelerates your project, substantially reduces your risk and automatically captures your test evidence.

Not only that, but Copado Robotic Testing also provides you with a single source for business documents, test cases, and training material. All these documents are generated from the same source, so they are always in sync and up-to-date.