Customer

The customer is one of the largest private-sector banks in India that has been leading the way in innovation and customer service. With a network of over 5,500 branches and 15,000 ATMs across the country, this bank offers a range of financial products and services to its customers, including personal banking, corporate banking, wealth management, insurance, and investment banking. The bank operates in a marketplace, providing its customers with access to a variety of financial products and services from multiple providers.

In this highly regulated industry, the bank has established a strong reputation for innovation and customer service. With a focus on digital transformation and customer experience, the bank is considered a leading player in terms of digital CX and the digitization of customer journeys.   
 

To maintain its position as a leading player in the industry, the bank is also at the forefront of testing modernization efforts, continuously exploring new technologies and approaches to improve testing efficiency, accuracy, and quality.

Project Scope

The project involved the development of a Loan Origination System (LOS) Platform customized for the bank. The LOS platform was API-driven, cloud-native, and microservices architecture-based, and provided a single platform for all agency activities and core module workflows. The platform also enabled integration with different internal and external services for all asset-based products and services and allowed for bot-based data entry and loan processing, as well as automated business and workflow rules.

The project encompassed 15 key modules and 7 sub-modules, with 10 mortgage products, 27 variants, and 54 sub-variants related to the product. Throughout the project, close to 100k+ test cases were designed and executed, including functional, field validation, integration, UI/UX, and cross-browser test cases.

To support the testing effort, around 140 modular scenarios and 16 end-to-end scenarios were developed as part of automation based on the 100k manual test cases. Additionally, 50+ scenarios were created for mobile automation testing of 9 key modules on both Android and iOS platforms.

The Challenge

The bank was facing several business challenges related to automation testing, including time-to-market, cost, and complexity. However, there were additional factors that set their situation apart from others in the financial industry:  
 

• Frequency of software releases: this made the regression testing process particularly challenging and time-consuming. With each new release, the testing process required a significant amount of repeated effort, which was inefficient and prone to errors.
• Test case complexity: as the software grew and new features were added, this contributed to a lack of consistency and accuracy in test results, which made it challenging to identify and resolve issues quickly.
• Script maintenance: this was a significant roadblock, as scripts needed to be modified to reflect changes in the user interface (UI) or underlying code. This was time-consuming and required skilled resources to ensure accuracy.
• Skill hire and retention: finding testers with expertise in programming languages was another challenge, as test automation and orchestration require specialized skills and knowledge.

These technical challenges further complicated the bank’s efforts to improve testing efficiency, accuracy, and quality.

Read more: Rethinking Test Automation to Address Business Challenges

The solution

Katalon, in association with QualityKiosk - their leading test automation partner in India, provided the bank with a powerful test automation platform that helped the team achieve faster automation with robust features.

The Katalon platform was ideal for the bank for several reasons. First, Katalon was easy to use and had an intuitive user interface that made it easy for non-technical users to create and execute tests. This was particularly important for the bank as it helped them to streamline their testing process and reduce the time required to train new team members on the tool.

Additionally, Katalon presented a low learning curve, thanks to its use of the popular scripting language, Groovy. This made it easier for non-technical users to create and maintain test scripts. This feature was particularly important for the bank as it helped them to reduce their dependence on skilled resources and allowed them to scale their testing efforts more effectively.

Finally, Katalon’s seamless integration with QRACE, a proprietary testing platform developed by QualityKiosk, made it easy for users to manage and execute their test cases in a single platform. This integration helped the bank to improve its testing efficiency and reduce the time required to manage and execute test cases.

Implementation strategy

After conducting a successful proof-of-concept project, the bank adopted Katalon as their test automation solution. To ensure the success of the implementation, they followed the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) process.

The process was kicked off with a requirements analysis to gain a clear understanding of what needed to be tested, including the inputs and expected outputs. Next, they created a comprehensive test plan that covered all requirements and defined the steps to be executed for each test case. Then test scenarios were designed to be automated using Katalon Studio.

With Katalon Studio, the bank was able to automate the execution of test scripts for each of their scenarios, including recording user actions, setting up data-driven tests, and writing custom functions. They created test data for each scenario and stored it in their test management tool. Next, they executed the test scenarios using the Katalon Runtime Engine (KRE).

Next, the bank analyzed the test results to identify defects and areas for improvement, reviewing logs and reports generated by Katalon. Any defects found were reported and tracked until they were resolved, and the testing process continued until all requirements had been thoroughly tested and verified.  
 

Katalon's built-in framework for automated testing was an essential aspect that helped the bank in its implementation. It includes pre-built templates, libraries, and test objects that can be customized and reused for various testing scenarios. This framework helped testers to create and execute automated tests efficiently and effectively, saving time and reducing errors.

Outcomes

The adoption of Katalon for regression testing has resulted in several benefits, including significant time savings, faster execution and results, and increased agility of the software development process.   
 

These are the most significant benefits observed after the implementation:

• Reduction in regression test development and maintenance time.
• Around 40-50% reduction in regression testing time, enabling the testing team to identify potential issues more efficiently and respond to them more effectively.
• Reduced test execution time by over 53%
• The reduction in test execution time helped to plan for more frequent releases with new functionalities.
• The adoption of Katalon has allowed the testing team to conduct daily regression tests and ensure the health of the applications on a regular basis.
• Katalon has enabled the team to manage testing of frequent releases on a daily basis, ensuring that the quality of the product is maintained throughout the development process.