Maximizing Efficiency and Savings with a Cutting-edge Test Data Management Framework

In today’s regulatory environment, organizations are compelled to adopt stringent security measures to mitigate the risk of PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data breaches in their production environments. However, the pressure to provision more test data in non-production environments, often sourced from production data, has introduced new vulnerabilities. The real risk of data breaches now lies in these non-production environments, highlighting the critical need for robust test data management (TDM) solutions. Such solutions enable organizations to provide unrestricted access to high-quality test data while protecting customer PII from breaches.

Achieve Significant Time & Storage Savings with an Effective TDM Framework

An effective TDM framework adheres to best practices for data management, ensuring optimal performance and efficiency. Here are the core components of such a framework:

In-Depth Requirements Identification

Leveraging deep industry knowledge, an effective TDM strategy begins with establishing complete requirements for test data, including the source, volume, complexities, data subset policies, and data synthesis needs.

Holistic TDM Processes

Clearly defined data management workflows, policies, and procedures are essential for creating, loading, and protecting test data. Metrics are established to measure data health in each environment, minimizing the use of production data volumes whenever possible.

Effective TDM Techniques

By creating optimized subsets of data, teams can use real data for effective testing while minimizing the required scale of data processing and storage. Techniques such as data masking, substitution, and encryption are employed to protect sensitive data.

Data Management Tools and Expertise

A robust Test Data Generator tool reduces the manual effort of creating test data, thereby minimizing errors. This approach promotes the reuse of subset criteria and masking policies across multiple sources.

Dedicated Data Governance Center of Excellence

A dedicated Data Governance Center of Excellence provides the necessary tools, resources, and expertise to accommodate every project’s test data needs.

In-Depth ETL Testing Services

Clients benefit from in-depth extract, transform, and load (ETL) testing services. Experts follow core ETL principles in TDM practices, ensuring high-speed and accurate results with the ability to reuse indexes and up to 70% of components.

Benefits of Using a Comprehensive Test Data Manager with Packaged Applications

A comprehensive Test Data Manager offers a unique and extensive combination of capabilities, including data subset creation, masking, synthetic generation, cloning, and on-demand data generation. These features empower testing teams to meet their organization’s demands for testing agility. This solution automates one of the most time-consuming and resource-intensive tasks in continuous delivery environments: the creation, maintenance, and provisioning of test data needed to rigorously test evolving applications.

Two critical aspects of delivering excellent service are utilizing consistent test suites and having proper datasets for those tests. Implementing both ensures more consistent, timely, and reliable deployments of packaged applications. This is crucial because these applications are often relied upon in mission-critical areas such as enterprise resource planning, finance, inventory management, customer service, and sales.

Experienced testers know the data they need – both the variety and volume – to test existing systems in production. However, collecting this data often requires significant support from operational groups and many custom, one-off scripts. Tools like a Test Data Manager solve this problem by offering data masking, versioning, and distribution capabilities. These tools help testers use the right data in the best places, effectively improving the quality of the applications being delivered.

By automating test data management, teams can focus on enhancing application quality rather than being bogged down by data preparation tasks. This leads to faster development cycles, reduced costs, and higher-quality software. Ultimately, a robust Test Data Manager helps organizations achieve their continuous delivery goals more efficiently, ensuring that critical applications perform optimally in real-world scenarios.

Harness a Robust and Unified TDM Solution

A robust and unified TDM solution enables continuous automation, shift-left defect identification, and faster test data creation while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Coupled with advanced data assurance expertise, this tool offers significant benefits in terms of cost, compliance, and security.

Key benefits of this TDM solution include:

• Enhanced Compliance and Security: Protects against significant fines for regulatory non-compliance, such as GDPR violations.
• Increased Productivity: Reduces manual processes, leading to increased productivity.
• Time and Cost Savings: Cuts the average time testers spend on test data, reducing costs and accelerating deployment.
• Improved Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Reduces data-related defects, leading to higher quality and greater customer satisfaction.
• By integrating these advanced capabilities, organizations can ensure their TDM practices are efficient, secure, and compliant, ultimately enhancing the overall quality of their software products.

Conclusion

Enterprises across various industries can reap significant benefits by investing in a comprehensive TDM strategy that ensures test data is accurate and readily available. This approach can reduce the costs of storing and processing test data, increase testing effectiveness and coverage, and enhance the efficiency of test cycles. Additionally, it minimizes the risk of exposing sensitive data to non-production users.

Enterprises utilizing TDM in a managed services model can benefit from broader access to specialized skills, optimal resource utilization, and cost savings. By adopting a cutting-edge TDM framework, organizations can achieve their continuous delivery goals more efficiently and ensure their critical applications perform optimally in real-world scenarios.

Need help? Contact our TDM experts to maximize efficiency and savings with a cutting-edge Test Data Management framework.