| Sector | Retail — enterprise |
| Engagement | Third-party platform implementation testing |
| Scope | Customisation and integration validation |
5 days → 4 hours regression cycle
80% reduction in production defects
80% automation coverage
The Challenge
Our client, a major retail enterprise, was rolling out a third-party expense management platform across the organisation.
Package implementations carry a specific testing problem. The vendor tests their product, but nobody tests your version of it — and by the time a large enterprise has configured approval hierarchies, integrated finance systems, and adapted workflows to its own policies, the customisation layer is substantial and entirely untested.
The client was running a five-day manual regression cycle across that customisation before each release, and defects were still reaching production — where an expense platform failure means employees not being reimbursed and finance teams reconciling by hand.
The Solution
We took responsibility for validating the entire customisation and integration layer.
The approach separated vendor functionality from client-specific configuration, and concentrated effort where the risk actually sat — the approval workflows, the finance system integrations, and the policy rules that had been adapted to the client operating model.
We built automation covering that layer to 80% coverage, replacing the five-day manual cycle. Because the tests were designed around the client configuration rather than generic platform behaviour, they caught the defects that mattered — the ones introduced by customisation rather than by the vendor.
Business Outcomes
- Regression cycle reduced from five days to four hours
- 80% reduction in production defects
- 80% automation coverage across the customisation layer
- Estimated $500k annual saving in cost of poor quality
- Vendor updates validated against client configuration before release
Facing something similar?