How a financial service company closed the gap in their test automation and is now able to test the FIS Cross-Asset Trading and Risk platform (formerly Front Arena) with TestResults automatically

The Challenge

TECHNOLOGY THAT CAN’T BE HANDLED BY CONVENTIONAL TEST AUTOMATION TOOLS

A respected financial service provider leverages Front Arena, an electronic trading and position management platform for all their multi-asset workflows. Front Arena allows automation and integration of trading and risk management, sales and distribution, settlement, and accounting.

This software, essential for the bank’s business, couldn’t be tested in an automated fashion. Two different test automation tools were evaluated: One just detected a black square, and the other retrieved continuous text that did not make any sense. Front Arena heavily utilizes graphical tables, a typical bottleneck for conventional test automation tools.

Therefore, this business-critical application is tested manually. As always in daily business, they cannot dedicate the time required for thorough testing, resulting in a direct business risk.

The Solution

TECHNOLOGY AGNOSTIC TEST AUTOMATION

They were eager to find a solution to test Front Arena automated and free up the team from time-demanding manual testing. As they had already tried two tools, they were skeptical if any software test automation tool could ever handle the complex UI of this trading platform.

As TestResults interacts with the software as a user without relying on the code, i.e., automated black box testing, it has proven that it can interact with Front Arena without any problems. With the pre-set AI table recognition, you only need to label the element as a table, and all columns and rows are recognized. You define the interactions you want TestResults to take, and that’s it. The entire table is automated.

The Result

BEING CERTAIN THAT FRONT ARENA RUNS AS EXPECTED WHILE NOT BLOCKING LIMITED RESOURCES

Besides finally being able to test Front Arena automated, they didn’t have to train anyone on table automation nor on a new tool. After a short onboarding, they automated the most critical test cases in a few days. Now, having mitigated the business risk and gained confidence back, everything works as expected. The team has their time back for the task for which a human is needed, and the test coverage is at the desired level.

Especially for financial service companies and banks, it’s critical to ensure their applications work as expected through automated software testing: self-develop and purchased applications. Gaps in test automation with “non-automatable” applications or processes are a significant risk that could be fatal for the core business and reputation.

Mitigate this risk before you run into problems or the next audit.

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