How to Test a CRM Application

Customer Relationship Management is very important these days for a a core business and there are various technologies that have introduced CRM applications and if there occurs bugs in those then what will happen is that everything in their business will collapse. To make it simple we need to test the application thoroughly. From the tester's end the testing is the same but the methodology will vary for different concepts and different applications. Let us discuss here about how to test a CRM application.

CRM

Figure 1: CRM

What to test

There are mainly two broad areas to test in a CRM application, they are functionality and performance. Other than these two major areas, data quality and data maintenance play a vital role. Let us explain them in detail.

Functionality Testing

This deals with the application's functions as per the requirements and it ensures that it fits during the migration of data from another legacy systems. The values and other data are populated in the correct fields. There are some key points we will discuss regarding the functional testing below.

Organization wide default
Access level
Accessible to hidden datas
Transaction processes
Connection lost
Proper exception handling
Avoid data mismatch
Pre-Authorisation
Post-Authorisation

Figure 2: Functionality Testing

Data-Quality

There will be many migration activities in CRM and at every stage of migration we must be sure enough about the data. Because if the data is not there then the CRM is nothing without the data. To ensure data activities there are certain features to test with data, they are:

Data-duplication
Data-mapping
Wrong data entry
Missing of data
Data sorting
Data security
Hidden datas
Missing of datas
Data updations
Editable options of datas
Data used for graphical representations
Data used for reportings

Figure 3: Data-Quality

Performance Testing

This is a testing under which the application will work under pressure or stress or load. This can measure the effects of many users on the system's performance. Here we need to test some of the features that I have listed below.

Response time
Server utilization
Peak hours testing
Loading speed
Error with any other integrated applications due to this
Maximum number of users

Figure 4: Performance Testing

Integration Testing

This will be a challenge in CRM applications where we will be migrating or integrating some other applications into the present CRM. We must see some of the features.

Field and Labels matching each other
Dependencies are integrated properly
Date format
Reports and formats
Validations of datas
Sorting orders
Accuracy and reliability

Figure 5: Integration Testing

Regression Testing

Figure 6: Regression Testing

There will be regression testing always in an application like CRM where we need to test before migration and after migration. After migration whether the values are populated into the correct fields and validations are matched with the data. Other fields should not be disturbed because of this. This will measure:

Functional correctness and completeness
Reliability
Confidentiability
Scalability
Even performance

Any time requirements change (a common occurrence in CRM implementations), new features are added or defects are fixed, you should run these regression tests again.

Thus people should have the basic attributes when testing a CRM application.

8 Comments

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Mahesh Singh10y ago
good one
Ankit Bansal11y ago
nicely explained
Rajkiran Swain11y ago
Nice ,, it help me too ,,,
Sharad11y ago
nice information
Debasis Saha11y ago
Nice one..
Nilesh Jadav11y ago
Nice article!
Sibeesh Venu11y ago
Good one. Thanks for sharing :)
Gopi Chand11y ago
Nice one