If your pharmaceutical company is like most, you likely rely on business-critical applications to process millions of on-demand transactions for a large and prolific user base. The risks are high, and failure can be costly for Test Centers of Excellence (CoE) in these companies. They need to make sure that applications exhibit functional readiness, high availability and strict compliance with the regulatory controls governing confidential medical information. That makes it imperative that application development teams need to automate testing, to performance test every build – early and often.

Here are five reasons why test automation is so critical for the Test CoE operating in the pharmaceutical industry:

1. Quality Performance: With intricate transaction flows, even the smallest bit of rogue code can bring down an entire system. Testing code changes early in the application development cycle can help you avoid costly issues.

2. Global Reach: Pharmaceutical applications are typically used in multiple markets around the globe. It is imperative that you test localized strings and the loads you might experience across various geographies.

3. Data Integrity: If a drug name is used inconsistently across an application, the consequences could be dire and impact patient health. You need continuous, textual testing for data integrity, with every application change validated in real time.

4. Systems Integration: Specialized pharmaceutical applications typically integrate with a variety of business apps, including those used to process payments, insurance claims, barcode scans -- and more. Since a broken process flow can bring work to a halt, frequent integration testing is critical.

5. Industry Compliance: To avoid legal and financial risks, your apps need to align with the strict compliance requirements imposed by drug administration agencies. The business rules, standards and best practices established by your Test Center of Excellence (CoE) must be applied across every step in your application development and deployment process companywide.

Test Continuously to Experience Big Benefits in the Test CoE

So what’s the best and most affordable way to automate your tests for quality, global reach, data integrity, systems integration and industry compliance? You need continuous, open source-based test automation that enables you to incorporate feedback early in the software development cycle and avoid last minute risks. When you adopt continuous testing, you get three big benefits:
• Continuous Quality: You can perform functional and nonfunctional automated testing on demand and achieve your performance goals across the entire software delivery lifecycle. You can reduce friction and deliver quality software faster. No longer a question of if but rather when, 93% of respondents in a recent survey are already adopting CI/CD processes.

• Risk Mitigation: With real-time feedback and transparency, you can achieve data integrity and manage compliance end-to-end, deploying your application with confidence. …