Worksoft Certify Reviews

We have done one POC (proof of concept) for Worksoft Certify, for one application, for one of our clients. The POC was successful, so we implemented the solution. We did it for a pharmaceutical product, a pharmaceutical domain.

What I found most valuable in Worksoft Certify is its identification feature. I also found its automation feature valuable.

What could be improved in Worksoft Certify is its integration with other tools, for example, test management tools such as Jira, ALM, or any other test management tools. That integration is missing.

I've used Worksoft Certify for two years, and I've used it in the last twelve months.

Worksoft Certify is a stable solution. I'm rating it a four out of five in terms of stability.

Worksoft Certify is scalable, and I'm giving its stability a rating of four out of five.

The technical support for Worksoft Certify was really impressive. It was really good. We needed to create new controls, and we got a good response from their team. On a scale of one to five, with one being the worst and five being the best, I'm rating them a five.

The initial setup for Worksoft Certify was very simple. On a scale of one to five, with five being the best and one being the worst, I'm giving the initial setup a five.

Deploying Worksoft Certify took just one hour after getting the license. The implementation was done by our in-house team.

I'm not aware of any licensing costs for Worksoft Certify.

Worksoft Certify is in hybrid mode in terms of deployment.

Currently, there are 50 users of Worksoft Certify in the company.

My rating for Worksoft Certify is ten out of ten.

We have an SAP environment, so we use Worksoft for SAP and the ecosystem around SAP. Most of the use cases are related to SAP products or interfaces and the applications that are interacting with SAP.

We use it for test automation. We are basically using it for regression testing, especially for our releases. For example, in the big SAP systems, when we have support package upgrades or bigger function releases, we use end-to-end test automation to ensure that the changes are not impacting the processes in the system. With this test effort, we can make sure that the releases are running without any issues in the production systems.

We started using it around six years ago with an on-prem installation, and we had a pretty good experience with that. The way we are using the software is that we have installed it on our terminal server so that not every tester has to install it on his own machine. Having this terminal server environment is allowing us to really stick to specific standards in terms of how the software will be used and in which sequence updates will be distributed on the server. It also helps in terms of the connectivity to the systems that we require for test automation. It makes it quite easy for people to concentrate on developing tests and not on the environment. 

We are running version 12.0, and 2006.77 is the patch level. 

In terms of its web UI testing abilities for testing modern applications, such as SAP Fiori, we started implementing a project two years ago where we developed a logistic layer and a finance layer, which all the future SAP systems of the headquarter divisions will be using. For that project, we had introduced Worksoft for automated testing. We are quite heavily using Worksoft in that area. We have all of our core functionality in that area automated, and we had a really good experience with Fiori. 

Worksoft has these so-called configuration files that you can get for different applications to define the maps. We are also using ServiceNow or Pega for Workforce management. For both applications, you can get so-called configuration files from Worksoft, and with these configuration files, Worksoft can very easily identify the objects. So, you don't need to learn Worksoft from scratch, but you can really build on the foundation of already-existing definitions coming from Worksoft. 

It provides codeless end-to-end process automation across packaged applications. It does not have the approach of writing scripts or having a scripting language for the logic. It is pretty easy to adopt. It is helping us in general because you don't need a developer or a technical guy for building these scripts. People in the business organization can really design their own scripts without heavy IT support. Normally, we just teach testers how to work with Certify in general for a couple of hours. If they have understood the basic patterns in terms of how to find specific commands, how to really work with these conditions, and how to work with varietals, after a day or two, they are able to work with this solution. They might sometimes ask where to find specific things, but because Worksoft also provides master content with a lot of examples, they can deal with it from there. In our company, we have an approach that all people work on the same project. This means that they are also sharing their scripts internally so they can read and steal from others. We also have a concept that for every SAP system, there should be one test architect who is knowledgeable. He is a key user, and he drives the effort to bring knowledge to people. 

It definitely reduces the time you spend on test maintenance. The debug feature, the recognition feature, and the decoupling of scripts and maps are really saving time. Imagine having an error at step 850 in a test script that has 1,000 test steps, and these 850 steps have taken you an hour for execution. In such a case, you have to repeat the entire test because you don't have the possibility to go back to certain steps. Every time, you will lose an hour or two in maintenance. Having these features makes it pretty effective and efficient, but it is hard to say the exact time because you don't know how often your scripts are breaking because of updates. It also depends on the number of scripts. We also have to see the number of saved hours in relation to other tools. So, if you're comparing it with an open-source test automation tool like Selenium, it might be saving you more time, but that might not be the case if you're comparing it with Micro Focus or Tosca. 

It has definitely enabled us to scale up our testing. When you use automated test scripts for test cases, your testers are released from that testing time, and they can concentrate on further testing. The way we are introducing test automation in our organization is that we say, "Okay. This dummy type of testing can be done by a robot such as Certify," and then our testers, who are hopefully more intelligent than the machine, can concentrate more on the individual tests. You cannot really automate all the test cases, and it allows our testers to concentrate on the individual test cases.

Worksoft Certify works well for creating test scripts. As compared to other tools for test automation, what is very good in this tool is the ability to implement logic into the scripts without coding and learning a complex script language. It is comparable to defining formulas in Excel. It is pretty easy to learn how to make your scripts more intelligent and more flexible as per the situation.

The decoupling of the test scripts from the data and the application is also a nice feature. When you are creating test scripts, for example, for a web application, you have to learn about Worksoft and how the controls of a screen can be interpreted by Worksoft. For that purpose, you create so-called maps. These maps are loosely coupled to your scripts, which means if the application is changed, the control will be changed from an identifier. You don't need to rework the entire script. You only need to do these adjustments in the map, and then you can automatically reuse the scripts. So, it is really a smart move to have the decoupling of scripts, maps, and data. 

Its debugging functionality is pretty powerful as compared to other tools. Recognizing the errors sometimes could be challenging. When the debug function, for debugging your scripts, runs on an error, it can stop at that error and identify the elements that may have not been recognized. It can then update the definition to recognize the object. It then repeats the step again so that you have a so-called execution pointer, which you can then use for your debugging. 

Certify is integrated with Solution Manager, but this integration could be easier. 

Overall, in terms of how it is working, I find it pretty clever in all the areas. There are only tiny things. For example, to log into Certify, you have to put in your username and password. In version 12, they changed it, and the password is no longer stored. So, you have to enter it every time you log in. Similarly, there should be a way to store the layout of tables in Certify. You can adjust your tables, but when you close Certify, if I recall correctly, the layout of the table is not stored automatically. So, you have to adjust it every time. I'm, however, not quite certain about it. 

These are tiny things that they can improve, but compared to the whole feature list of Certify, they are not so important.

I have been using this solution for around six years.

We regularly update the software when we see that there are new features available or if there are fixes in certain areas. In general, the Certify software is pretty stable. Based on our experience, there is no need to import patches every month or on very short notice. We normally plan for once a year version update.

In our S4 project, we had the need to develop automated testing for Excel-based solutions. We needed to test the business planning functionality that was running in Excel from SAP. It is quite challenging to build automated test scripts in desktop applications like Excel, but we got quite good support from the offshore team of Worksoft. We had a talk with an engagement manager from Worksoft, and then someone from India came to Lisbon, Portugal, and they all worked together. Our team quite quickly learned how to handle the challenges in that area. So, it is not only about the tool; it is also about the support you are getting from Worksoft. Their support was quite impressive.

It is pretty powerful as compared to other tools. We developed our own tool, and we have also compared it with Micro Focus. We have some knowledge of QTP from HP and Tosca Tricentis. From my perspective, especially when it comes to debugging and also object recognition, Worksoft may be one or two years ahead as compared to the other tools.

When we started with this solution, we had an engagement program. We had a consultant from Worksoft for 20 or 30 days on demand. It was an engagement contract that we had signed while acquiring the licenses. We had two or three onsite sessions. This consultant was here in Berlin with me and helped with the installation and documentation. This engagement really should be seen as enablement. It was not that the consultant did everything and then handed over the documentation. These sessions were more like hands-on sessions, which means our administrators understood how to install the software, how to configure the software, and how to make connections between different applications, especially with the database. They also understood how to make sure that our security regulations are met because there were some problems there. After we had documented everything, the consultant did his job with other clients, and we continued to handle the software on our own. We are deploying patches these days without any support from Worksoft because we simply learned how to do it.

Its initial setup is complex. There is the client part and the database part that you have to install. The client installation is pretty easy and straightforward, and you just have to click the Next button. For the database part, there are SQL Server scripts that need to be executed on the database server. It is pretty simple. You have scripts running on the database, and typically, they run without errors. In all these years, we had problems with the upgrade only twice. We have a QA environment where we typically test the upgrades. We had an error because a column was missing in the table. We raised a ticket, and someone from Worksoft helped us. We learned how to handle it and did the same on the production system without any support. 

If you give me a system, a database server, and maybe a terminal server and we have to install both parts, the database part can be done in one or two hours, which includes preparation time, execution time, and post-installation time. Overall, it would take a day because the database also requires some time for installation. If you are simply differentiating between the effort and the duration, in terms of duration, the database would take a day. In terms of effort, it would take one or two hours. The client part also takes one to two hours, depending on the resource you are using. After that, you only need to do the configuration to connect to the license server and the database. If you know what to do, it would be up and running in a maximum of two hours. We are not really talking about a complex SAP system. It is simply a test automation tool.

We have seen an ROI. In the end, it is money and time. You save time for the testing, and you also save time in making corrections. If you don't have such high-quality testing, you will end up with errors in the production system. You will also have some interruptions in the daily business in your SAP systems. That's one aspect of the return on investment. The easiest way to calculate the ROI is in terms of the effort that you are reducing for testing.

I can only judge based on the situation that we had around six years ago when we did the tool evaluation. Worksoft was not the cheapest, but it provided the value. For 25 concurrent licenses, we paid more than €400,000, so it was not cheap. In the end, if you see how much time you are saving and compare it with others, its price is okay. We had also compared its cost with the licensing costs for HP and Tricentis, and they were at another level.

Now, as we have already booked the licenses, we only have to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is 70%, and that is okay.

The biggest change was not really the tool. There is the saying, "A fool with a tool is still a fool." That's pretty much true. When you are starting with test automation, you basically have to understand the concepts behind test automation, and you have to learn how the robot does the testing. Normally, your testers are reacting, and they are pretty flexible. For example, if they recognize that something is blocking a storage location, they free up the storage location and continue. If you are doing the same with an automated test script, this needs to be implemented in the test script or logic. This is pretty much the difference. So, you need to be very precise in knowing the circumstances or issues that the tool might come across during a test. You also have to have a big focus on the test data. That's because if someone changes your master data, your test scripts will fail, and you won't be able to differentiate whether the error is on the system side or the data side. 

You also need to think about how you are building your end-to-end tests. In the past, most of our tests were in the area of functional tests, but for the dependencies between the different functions, we really had to concentrate on end-to-end testing. This is pretty much the challenge when people from different organizations have to work together. There must be someone from the purchasing team and the finance team to negotiate on specific test cases and test data, which really takes time. With Certify, you have a tool with which you can concentrate on the content and the logic of your end-to-end scripts, and you don't need to spend so much time handling the tool. A good piece of advice for someone who would like to use Certify is that do not concentrate so much on the tool. You should concentrate more on the concepts and circumstances, such as how to ensure the stability of your systems and data. Are you going to introduce a pre-prod system, an isolated system, or an environment? That is more challenging than the tool.

We are using the Capture feature to capture a sequence of our test. Once this sequence is recorded in Capture, we then transfer it to Certify and continue the development there. The Capture feature is kind of a movie that you create. This movie is transferred to the Certify tool, and you can use a feature called BBP to transfer your test scripts into multiple formats. You can transfer it to PDF or Word format. You can show the process documentation with screenshots in a Word document, but in our company, we are very much standardized and formalized. So, this kind of process documentation is not sufficient. We can use it for simple documentation, for example, for discussing change requests for an SAP system, but for comprehensive detailed documentation, we have tools in place.

We have different tools in our company for RPA. RPA is not really in the area of Worksoft. I know that some of the organizations that are using Worksoft Certify for automation are also using it for RPA, but this is more of an exceptional case.

I would rate Worksoft Certify a nine out of 10. I'm pretty confident of and satisfied with this tool, but there is always room for improvement.

Initially we were automating the regression suite for SAP ECC.

From there we moved into a web application called HVAC Partners, which is something that we've developed that is a type of customer portal. That application also connects to SAP, but it does some other things that don’t necessarily connect to SAP. It is a kind of front end for quotes and sales orders that go into SAP, but it's also reporting status of orders and status of warranty claims and the like for the customers.

From there we moved into the Middle East SAP ECC instance and automated their regression suite and, from there we rolled out S/4HANA for our service business. With S/4, SAP releases updates every quarter. Because the S/4HANA instance is in the public cloud we have two weeks, essentially, to regression test and test any new functionality. We started with the last release and we did about 70 percent of the testing with Worksoft. We also used the S/4 automation tool, which is more for unit testing so it's not as valuable as Worksoft. We're wrapping up that automation in about the next month and we'll be moving on to a European rollout of S/4. We'll just start working our way across Europe and those implementations.

We have it on a virtual server and we're using remote desktop access for the offshore automation engineers to access it.

We're using it with Fiori and it's working fine. We have integration in and out of S/4 to Salesforce.com so we also automated those. The test cases were end-to-end. We start in Salesforce, which is a web application, with, for example, a quote, and then it goes into S/4 and gets reviewed and approved. It then goes back to Salesforce with the approval and a sales order is entered that ends up going back to S/4. And then there's fulfillment, back and forth, and eventually billing and collections. We were able to do that whole automation with Worksoft, plugging into Salesforce as well as integrating to S/4 and doing the S/4 automation, back and forth. It's been incredibly useful. We saved something like 80 percent of the time it would have taken to manually test, using this tool.

In terms of using the Capture feature without knowledge of testing tools, we brought on some new support people. One of them is our web support person and she had no background in Worksoft. She's been using it to do all the initial captures for our HVAC Partners. She's been able to use it very easily. Our more experienced automation engineers will follow up, after she's done the Capture piece, and troubleshoot some of the stuff that she might not understand yet. They're working with her so that she does learn it. But she's been able to use it very easily.

Worksoft’s ability to build tests and reuse them is very good. We ended up obsoleting the tests and not using them with the other tool we used, whereas now, we rerun these, at a minimum, every month. We do that for a few reasons. One reason is to keep the health of the tests up. Suppose a material is obsoleted. The test that has that material in it is going to fail because it's going to say, "Material not found." Or suppose a customer is no longer a customer and he has been blocked or archived. We run the tests to make sure that the scripts don't need any changes. We also use them in case a process has changed. We're releasing changes to SAP about every two weeks: support tickets, enhancements, maintenance, etc. If a business process changes, then the automated test needs to change to reflect that change. Running them every month, at a minimum, helps make sure that everything is healthy.

The other reason is to identify anything in our quality system that could unintentionally impact other things that the programmers didn't realize. We've caught a couple of those in queue and they said, "Okay. I didn't mean to do that. I only meant to change this one thing,” but it changed all kinds of things and we were able to catch that before it went into production. So the reusability is fabulous if you create the tests properly: no hard-coding, and you’re using data tables to hold any of your field selections, and you're using good automation standards, so you create and consume your data. If you create it and consume it, when you rerun it, it does the whole thing again. You don't have to worry about finding a sales order that works, for example. You really have to create a logical test design to make it reusable but as long as you do that, it's very reusable.

It dramatically reduces the time we spend on testing. Before we started using this tool, everyone was pretty much doing testing manually and test events were taking from two to six weeks. What they did in two to six weeks, depending on the scope of what they were doing and how many people they had involved, we can usually do in one to two days.

The most dramatic was when we finished the Middle East automation. They were bringing up another company code and they wanted us to run regression testing on all of their current company codes, about seven of them. We completed it in about four days. The IT director came to us and said that it reduced their labor by 93%. “Quite frankly,” he said, "we would never have been able to do all of that testing. We would have had to engage a minimum of 28 people, and it would've taken them a minimum of eight weeks, and we still would not have been able to do all of the tests. We wouldn't have gotten them done." We were able to do it in a fraction of the time and with a broader scope than they would've been able to do. They would've done as much as they could and then they would have gone live and hoped for the best.

And we've also been able to use it for other things like certain recurring tasks that had been done manually. We had people who were manually monitoring Tidal jobs, which are batch jobs that have been scheduled to run. If a Tidal job fails, somebody has to go in and figure out why it failed and either restart it or fix it, and then rerun it. These are jobs like billing jobs and we automated them. They probably spend 15 minutes a week on billing jobs now, whereas we had somebody doing this about 12 hours a week. And then that person would have to send out an email to whomever the relevant person was saying, "Hey, check your batch job. This isn't running." They now spend about 15 minutes running it. It saves the emails to the users, documents the results in a spreadsheet, and puts it out to a SharePoint where the auditors can pull them any time they want. It was the same thing with monitoring the claims jobs. We've done a few things like that which have added to the value.

Automation using Certify has also saved testing time, big-time. As I said, the Middle East: 93 percent. For the S/4HANA project, what we did in three or four days, they had been taking two weeks and not getting through at all. With the release, you don't get to say to SAP, "Hey, testing is running behind, we need another week," because it's in the public cloud. Like it or not, they're going live. The drill is supposed to be: You test during week one and you remediate in week two and you go live that weekend. We got our stuff done, 70 percent of the work, in about three days, and it was our first time, out-of-the-gate, so it'll go easier with the next release. The rest of the team took the entire two weeks to do their 30 percent. And within the 30 percent they were doing, a lot of them were smaller tests. We were doing end-to-end tests that go through Salesforce and S/4, etc.

In terms of defects, the value is finding the defects prior to moving something into production. There are two I'm thinking of that we found in Mexico. One of them would've brought shipping to a halt and the other one would have brought receiving to a halt. If you shut down factories, even for a short period of time, there is this domino effect. The value of those finds is huge. And this wasn't even something that the guys making this change were testing. They were testing the piece that they changed, which was working. What they didn't realize is that they changed all items instead of just that subset. It was a minor goof in the programming. It was just too broad of a statement. 

I started in IT about nine years ago and we did total manual testing. We would have defects in the high hundreds to 1,000 during the implementation testing. Now, we're probably under 100, so it's much lower. It could be that we're just getting better at implementations.

It's pretty seamless with SAP and Salesforce because they've built in the field definitions and all the things that you need. You literally turn it on and execute your script and it records it. It's very simple. Then you can go back and put in some of the other functions. For example, instead of hard-coding field selections, you put in a data table so you can run it multiple times or with multiple data. It was actually written to work very well with SAP.

Salesforce came a little later. Obviously, big companies like ours don't just use SAP. We have integrations with Salesforce and CRM and CPQ and all these other programs that integrate with SAP. Worksoft started looking at its customer-base and saying, "Okay, what are the popular ones you guys use?" Salesforce was one that came up. So one of their releases, about a year or so ago, included the ability to record in Salesforce like it has for SAP, so it's super-easy.

We’ve used the Capture not only to train people on how to do things, but also to provide the output to our users so they can validate that what we tested was proper. Capture is very good. It is lengthy, though, because it documents every keystroke that you do. At the beginning it will list all the field selections that we use and then it will give you each step: what it is, pass or fail. If we put in a screenshot, that shows up. It's up to you as to whether you put in screenshots or not. A lot of the times the documentation we provide as a PDF is lengthy but it's also very thorough, which is good.

Certify provides codeless, end-to-end process automation across packaged applications. It works well with SAP and Salesforce, for example. Another one that they have done all the definitions for is Oracle. We haven't started on our Oracle ERPs yet, but it's good to know that we can. We just don't have automaters who know Oracle, so we're sticking to what we know right now. The process automation makes for relatively fast automation compared to the other tool that we've tried to use. It makes it so much easier because you don't need any technical programming knowledge. A lot of the other ones are Java-based or based on other tech languages. That's a skillset that the average tester or support person does not have. It makes it very easy for those guys and the learning is quicker too, because the troubleshooting is easier. You look at the code, you can read what it's doing. You understand the business process and you say, "Okay, that's failing because we failed to set this flag, or fill out this field." It’s pretty simple.

I would like the ability to more easily modify the report from the Capture feature. One of the things I don't like is that it keeps repeating all the field selections throughout. To me, if we put them up front, we shouldn't have to repeat them at the different steps. It should just be Pass/Fail and show the screenshot. I've talked to them about this in the past.

There's another part of the Worksoft suite that probably does a better job at documentation for training purposes and providing an understanding of business process. It's the Certify BPP which we're not using right now because we're really focusing on automating all these different ERP systems. Whereas the testing is very detailed, which is great for the auditors and it's great for the users because they see everything we're doing, it makes for some big PDFs. It's a double-edged sword.

Also, with the codeless process automation across packaged applications, once in a while, if we get a weird application that's not widely used, it gets a little stickier. First, the software has to learn the fields, so you have to identify all the fields. Once you do that, as long as there isn’t any non-standard code in the application, then it works fine. But there's that one step that you have to do, a step you don't have to do with SAP and Salesforce, for example.

In addition, Worksoft definitely needs to continue the march toward bringing in more and more of the software that people commonly use. They're doing that, but they can only march so fast.

I know Worksoft is doing some stuff with RPA. There are other tools that strictly do RPA, but aren't automated testing so I'm not sure if they will be able to compete with those. I know that we did do some automation, what we call "bots," with Worksoft, and it was clunkier than some of the RPA tools that are currently on the market. I suspect that they'll come up with a very competitive offering. 

I would also like to see some better reporting of testing status, reporting that we can easily generate to say "Okay, we're 50 percent done and we've got 10 fails and 800 passes." That's what test management software is for and Certify integrates with that. Bang-for-buck, it's probably not a great place for Worksoft to invest. They're probably better off with RPA and bringing on the ability to more easily test software, like Salesforce and CPQ. I'd love to be able to do that as easily as I can with SAP. I would like that same ability to use Capture in CPQ, instead of using Silverlight.

We started using Worksoft Certify in 2016, so it's been about four years.

Stability is very good. They do a lot of releases. They are probably using an Agile methodology, so every time I turn around, they have three more releases out there. It would be helpful if they could release once or twice a year, but I understand why they are doing it. They are adding new features because they want to get them out as quickly as they can. I just don't have time to stop, do an upgrade, and move on.

We haven't had a problem yet with the solution. It's been very good, and you don't have to upgrade every time they do a release. We do it probably once a year.

Scalability is fabulous.

We've certainly taken on more projects. When I first started about nine years ago, there was one major implementation at a time. At the moment we have about six major projects going on and, with the unwinding due to the spinoff, there are probably about 50, but those are not being tested with automated software. We're focusing on just the two SAP ERPs, S/4, and the ancillary web apps. It does allow them to implement faster. Since we did the Middle East, they've brought up two new companies in six months, which is amazing for them. It probably would have been one at a time over a year and a half or two years, otherwise.

We don't use Certify to create RPA at this point. We have so many ERPs to automate that we're sticking to that right now. We're trying to get to where we can pick up more licenses and build up the team so we can start doing some of these other things. Right now, with the spin-off from our parent, everybody is hyper-focused on unwinding. When you're part of a big organization like we were — we're still pretty big but we were huge, Fortune 50 — and you start unwinding things, there are so many shared services and servers that are on their domain, etc. It's going to take us two to three years to unwind all that. So we're marching ahead on our ERPs and I'm keeping my head down. I have my seven licenses, although I want to get about 10 more, but I'm not going to raise my hand until we get unwound.

Most of our issues have been our own internal infrastructure issues. We have a very tightly controlled infrastructure, so I'm always banging up against that. Worksoft has been able to help us solve these problems, and they're not even their problems.

It's far easier than other solutions. We previously had HP Quality Center and we could not maintain it. Prior to my taking over testing, they had implemented that tool. They brought in some outside contractors who did the initial automation and they handed it off to the support team to maintain. But it was so complex to update it when there was an error, or just for general maintenance that needed to be done, that they found it easier to just manually test. They quit using the tool. It was a complete waste.

With Worksoft, in stark contrast, there was a little bit of a learning curve up front because for about 70 percent of your effort you can use its record function that just records your keystrokes. But then you have to go in and harden the script, and put in data tables and screenshots and validations, that type of stuff. But compared to the other tool, there are no real programming skills needed. You learn how to use the functions and when you look at the script or the test, it's not like looking at code. You can actually read it and say, "Oh okay, that's inputting the month and the year," or "That's validating that the sales order posted." It's in English and it's very clear to follow. There's a drag-and-drop, and delete and all the things that you're used to using with other applications, like Word and Excel, that makes it very simple to use. Initially we had a little bit of training involved, but since then it has been incredibly easy compared to the old tool. The old tool didn't make it past a couple of years. It's been four years with Worksoft and we've got interest, globally, from other parts of the company that are asking, "When are you going to automate our regression suite?" So it has been very well received.

Setting it up was pretty straightforward. My biggest frustration was with our infrastructure. We set it up as a remote desktop but our company has all these firewalls and restrictions around access, and my team is mostly offshore contractors.

The offshore contractors have different access than I do. I spent a lot of time whitelisting different web sites to give them the access to the software we are testing.

Deployment took about a month and a half, mostly due to the infrastructure problems. However, now, when we need to upgrade the system, we can pull it down and run the installation. Then, we always get on a call with Worksoft, because if we miss one step and it doesn't work, we can't afford to have the team down. So we get on a call and spend about an hour running through the update.

Worksoft was fabulous help with the setup. They would get on a call anytime. They would help us walk through issues and help us figure them out; even how to navigate our systems. Their assistance during the setup was phenomenal.

We have seen ROI but it's very hard to capture because a lot of the benefits are hard to monetize. We have seen a huge reduction in the time to test and a huge reduction in the number of people needed to test. Rather than lay off a bunch of people, we've chosen to do more projects, so our rate of implementations has gone up. 

The 93 percent reduction in labor that the Middle East calculated was pretty impressive. I would say that, on average, it would be more like a 70 percent reduction in test time, because you still have to have people review the tests to make sure they're comfortable. Even though we say everything passed, they're going to want to review them. And then there's the retesting of any remediation that needs to be done.

The initial investment is probably a little high. It was a little hard for me to sell, but it was a one-shot deal and that's why it's so high. All we are doing now is paying annual maintenance, which we don't have to do if we don't want upgrades, but we do.

It is based on the number of licenses. If we had bought a larger number of licenses, our costs would have come down significantly, which is fair. I did struggle a little bit trying to sell it because our company had already had one failure with a testing solution, and here I was asking for money to try again. However, since we got it in, we have had great success.

We have seven licenses today. The people using it are three automation engineers/quality assurance testers who do SAP ECC. We also have three who do web application testing. They are the ones creating the automation for our portals, e.g., customer portal. I have one test lead who oversees this team and bounces between both SAP and web testing. We haven't bought a whole lot of licenses and haven't rolled it out to a massive number of users. We're doing all the work ourselves.

Since these are concurrent licenses, we could double the number of users with our current licenses because six out of the seven are offshore. While we are sleeping, they're using them.

The solutions we evaluated were all Java-based and they all took skills that we didn't have and we would have had to hire people to use them, or we would have had to train people. The people those solutions might be good for would be developers, but I'm not going to get a budget for a bunch of developers on a test team. And developers don't want to test; developers want to develop. I wouldn't even be able to hang onto these people. That's what failed with our initial attempt. We brought in programmers, they came up with a test, and nobody could maintain them afterwards. It was an investment that we threw out.

There are a number of lessons I have learned from using Certify.

• When you get started with it, you need to make sure that you have an executive sponsor so that you get the cooperation you need.
• Pick up some mentoring services from Worksoft to help you get started.
• You need to document your test cases well. Don't just start without good documentation, because then you make mistakes and then you have to rework that particular test script.
• Be very organized in the naming conventions and the standards you're using to do the automation. For example, don't shortcut. Fill out the fields that explain what the test objective is. That way, when somebody else comes in a year later and they ask, "What does this test do?" it's right there. Be organized.
• Try not to do too much with a single test. We wrote some that were crazy long: 500 to 600 steps because our process was a very complicated process. Step back and think in terms of logical chunks, because a script which is that big is difficult to maintain. You fix one thing and you get 20 percent of the way through and something fails. So you fix that and then you get another 20 percent and something else fails. It will take somebody half a day to fix one script. You can't have that delay when you have 500 that you're maintaining.

I would put Worksoft Certify right up there at a 10 out of 10. It's been the easiest package that we've done. The S/4HANA tool that comes pre-written, where we just go in and change our data to make it applicable to us, is pretty simple but it's not flexible enough. You can only test S/4HANA within those four walls and almost nobody uses just S/4HANA. There are always integrations. So Certify, as a tool that works across integrations from one package to another, documents the results, is easy to maintain, and easy to use, is a 10. I have not seen a package that is this easy and we did look at other ones. This one was just head-and-shoulders above them. It's really a fabulous product, I'm so impressed with it.

I use Worksoft Certify primarily for the functional testing of SAP applications.

I run Worksoft Certify for the entire end-to-end process flow to ensure that it is always working before and after patch upgrades, release upgrades, or any changes to the system when I run the test script.

My company gets some savings in manpower and cost and enjoys a boost in productivity because you only need a few hours to run end-to-end testing using the tool. If you do it manually, the process takes a few weeks, so Worksoft Certify greatly benefits my company.

What I like about Worksoft Certify is that end-to-end testing becomes faster.

The problem with Worksoft Certify is that it's not always stable. It runs on a live platform that's constantly changing, so the test script needs to be adjusted every time, which is very painful. That's the pain point in Worksoft Certify, and if Worksoft could make the solution more stable and more "change-proof," that would help my company greatly.

A feature I want to see in Worksoft Certify is for it to be able to work on test cases on mobile devices, though that could be difficult. I also wish to have more portability in the solution in terms of the script because, in the SAP environment, my company has to run Worksoft Certify in more than one system, so if Worksoft can make the process more portable, than would be fantastic.

I've been working with Worksoft Certify for about four years now.

Worksoft Certify could be more stable. It has stability issues.

Scalability is closely linked to stability. If Worksoft Certify is stable, then it's easily scalable, and if it's not stable, then it's still scalable, but every time, you have to make some adjustments.

I'm working with Worksoft Certify.

I always work with the latest version of the solution.

My rating for Worksoft Certify is eight out of ten.

We use this solution for functional testing and end to end regression testing.

One of the biggest advantages for this solution is codeless automation. Because it is codeless, you can train people within a couple of hours.

The overall speed and performance of this solution could be improved. In a future release, it would be useful to be able to do API testing. 

I have used this solution for one and a half years.

The stability of this solution could be improved. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The first line support of this solution are not that knowledgeable. They do not know the products well. They have knowledge of common issues and provide a check list they want you to perform. If the issue reoccurs, they contact another layer of technical support and this is really good. 

Neutral

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward as long as you have the SQL database up and running. It is a quick setup. 

This solution is expensive. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We mainly use Worksoft Certify for SAP automation, whereas we have web-based SAP and normal SAP background applications.

Worksoft Certify has helped organizations save time by using automation.

The most valuable features of Worksoft Certify are the way we can maintain the processes and sub-processes inside. We can immediately identify and replicate multiple objects in the application without having a major issue with it. We are able to do a lot of operations even with the solution being completely scriptless. That is a large advantage compared with other automation tools.

There are some other more complete tools than Worksoft Certify, such as Tricentis Tosca. It has a quicker way of taking in a customer's feedback with more efficiency. I do not see Worksoft Certify having a lot of progress over the years that we have used the tool in this area.

From 2014 to 2022, there were fewer improvements in the UI looks and feel. Overall there were fewer improvements in the solution. There were some challenges that we faced with our customers, and Worksoft Certify provides customer-specific call announcements. For example, customer A is trying to work on Worksoft Certify, they will face a specific challenge in utilizing the tool, and Worksoft Certify provides a custom solution to them. With customer B, they are faced with other challenges, and Worksoft Certify provided them with a customized solution. There is a chance that the same issue that was faced with customer A, customer B had also. Instead of Worksoft Certify providing a dedicated solution for everyone, they were providing solutions on a customized level. They can improve on this process.

There were some challenges that we faced with respect to automation. For example, there were some areas where we had to do a drag and drop of some of the objects from one place to another. In some of the areas in SAP where you have to perform a drag and drop, that feature was not available in Worksoft Certify. We had to find some alternate ways of doing those things.

I have been using Worksoft Certify for approximately three years.

The performance and stability of Worksoft Certify were good. We don't see a lot of issues or challenges that we're facing in this area. We have a 98 percent stability rate. We don't expect a lot of issues to happen in the application. On the SAP side, it was completely normal, it was working as expected, but coming to the web-based applications, when there are major changes. We have to remap the controls sometimes to ensure that the controls are working as expected.

Worksoft Certify is a highly scalable solution. However, it was a bit slower compared to the other automation tools. For example, Tricentis Tosca is providing major competition to Worksoft Certify and they are slightly a better tool. Whenever Worksoft Certify faces any challenges they're providing some patches to fix them, and that is helping the automation to grow faster and more efficiently. We have the layouts and plenty of recordsets that make Worksoft Certify more scalable.  

As an architect, I have to compare the support to other automation tools, there are some free tools, such as Selenium, where there is no support. However, there are some tools, such as Tricentis Tosca, where there is a dedicated technical support team who are available 24 hows a day seven days a week in the chat. We can directly chat and communicate with them. With Worksoft Certify we have to contact them directly and sometimes it can take some time, and the solutions that they provide are customer-specific. That is another challenge because when we have to work with multiple customers, this is another challenge that we face.

Neutral

I have been using multiple automation tools, such as Worksoft Certify, UFT, and Tricentis Tosca. Additionally, I have worked on other automation tools, such as Selenium and AccelQ. I provide solutions to the clients based on their requirements. I work on different automation tools.

We have a set of regression test cases that are already identified with the customer. They used to provide those sets of regression test cases to be used in their projects. We had to create some processes and sub-processes, such as our layouts and recordsets for the projects. Once we create all our sets, we create our regression suites using these areas and start working on them. We used to do a time-bound process where we needed to automate all these elements in a specific set of time that we had. Once we are done with the automation, we performed the activation of the sets in a cycle.

For the understanding of the requirements of Worksoft Certify, it did not take us a lot of time because we understand the process which is very important. Due to the specific functional area in SAP initial took the automation developers some time until they understood the functional requirement. However, once we understood how we were going to handle or manage the static and dynamic data, then the automation was simple using Worksoft Certify.

Once we complete the automation, our SMEs used to start utilizing this solution whenever there is any deployment. Instead of triggering the script manually, our SME triggers the automation scripts that they have the regression suite executed, and for other new automation scripts. Whatever the testing team tests the functional they started using Worksoft Certify for creating those automation scripts and started using them. There are different clients requirements based on the deployments. The deployments used to happen every two months, we have some regression suite to be executed, and whatever the new development that is going to happen, we used to utilize the dev environment to automate them and start executing them in the QA. This way they were faster and we can do instant automation.

We typically have a team of six people who were involved in the development of our particular automation scripts, and the exact number of people depends on the project that needs these scripts. For example, in my initial project where I worked on Worksoft Certify, we had a team of 13 people who were working for different process areas. We have different areas, such as production planning, retail management, and quality management service. Each area was handled by a specific developer and we used to have some teammates who were helping us and assisting in the automation of these scripts.

Normally it can take clients a lot of time for doing the regression. Using Worksoft Certify has reduced the time needed for this process. They don't need to replace all their SMEs for performing the regression because normally it used to take a lot of time for doing the initial regression activation. There were a lot of bugs that were reported and were reduced when we started using this tool. They used to use 10 people for doing the regression previously, for a span of a week. By using Worksoft Certify with using the automation scripts and 10 different systems activations happening, we saved a lot of time. We have seen a return on investment by using Worksoft Certify.

Worksoft Certify is slightly more expensive compared to other automation tools that are available on the market. However, the majority of the clients who are utilizing this solution, don't care much about the price. The main aspect the clients look for is its stability and reliability on the automation and whether they are able to rely on the automation scripts.

The solution can be purchased in different packages, some can include support.

I have evaluated lots of other solutions.

I have approximately eleven years of experience in this industry and over the past few years, I have been working as a senior architect.

Worksoft Certify is a good tool, but any tool can perform efficiently if you follow the best practices. If you're not following or utilizing the tool properly, there are chances that you might miss the opportunity. The main challenge with script less automation tools, such as Worksoft Certify or Tricentis Tosca is that you have to implement it along with best practices, and if proper best practices are implemented for these tools from the beginning, they can be extremely efficient and beneficial tools that can help to reduce efforts.

I rate Worksoft Certify a seven out of ten.

Our use cases are mainly from different domains for mobility solutions. It is also for HR and eCommerce.

We implemented more than 200 test cases for critically defined processes. 

It helps us understand the end-to-end scenario and how it can be divided into multiple subprocesses. Those sub processes can be used whenever required. Based on that, we design automation scripts, then reuse them wherever required.

The solution has enabled us to find defects since it is a test automation tool. However, irrespective of the tool used, we are testing to find defects. Thus, it has found defects in our projects.

Certify is a codeless automation tool with scripts that are easy to maintain. Since it doesn't use any coding language, a person (who is unaware of any language) can directly deploy just by training him/her on how the tool works. So, if a person is well aware of at least basic programming knowledge, it can then be deployed by providing basic training.

For SAP, we have many use cases. Certify is helping us to automate things, which is really awesome. The time spent to automate is less when compared with other tools.

Initially, there were challenges because there is a concept called XF definitions, where each application type, e.g., the vendor and workflow, has to provide these XF definitions. Last year, these XF definitions were not provided. However, whenever we face any issues, we have to raise a support case, then they update the XF definitions in our enrollment. This year, they improved that and have the last XF definitions for SAP Fiori updated as of February 2021.

For integration, projects are usually agile. The customers are looking for integration with CI/CD tools, like Jenkins, Jira, Xray, Zephyr, etc. There is no clear documentation on how to integrate Certify with these tools. Also, we didn't receive the required support when needed. Worksoft used to have webinars on this, but those webinars used to be on after the integration was established and how the integration works, not on how to create an integration.

They should come up with a solution on how to do the integration. Jenkins, Jira, and Certify should be the same in every company. The only thing required is the pipeline code required to integrate Jenkins, Jira, and Certify if they make it available for everyone. Also, if an expert team could help customers to integrate, then that would really help our customers a lot. 

As part of our weekly regression, we wanted to use Execution Manager. However, from 2017 until March 2021, Execution Manager was not working as expected in our enrollment. It could have been better. If Execution Manager had worked well, then we could have doubled our productivity. Unfortunately, it had problems. 

We have been using the solution since May 2017.

The stability of the solution depends on how good the Configuration of your environment is. We haven't faced any issues w.r.t the stability and performance. So we can say the solution works good. 

We have increased the number of tests that we run based on customer requirements.

Sometimes, the support engineers will be unaware of the solution for which a support case has been raised. Their competency or knowledge on the tool could be improved. When calling them, they will see the problem but need a senior engineer who will not be available. We will then be forced to have a second meeting. Waiting for meetings and solutions can be really hard for us because we can't deliver to our customers.

But since last some moths, Customer Support has improved as they conduct bi-weekly follow-up meetings to address our pain areas and expedite the solution for the Support cases which are open.

Neutral

Compared to our previous solution, Worksoft Certify reduces our test maintenance work by 50%.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took us a lot of effort and nerves to get it really running. I would also expect for the major CI/CD pipeline tools that these are somehow handled and covered.

The last upgrade of Certify happened in the month of March. That upgrade's time was around 30 minutes to one hour. There were also preparations needed because of internal policies for taking care of backups, which were a bit time-consuming.

There are separate server and database teams who have their own SLAs for deployment. It all depends on different project specifications. 

We have seen ROI from using Worksoft Certify. For example, in the mobility sector, we are frequently finding issues or defects that might have come into production if not properly tested. Some of them might cost some $10,000 if we had waited to solve them after they went to production.

Automation using Worksoft Certify has saved our testing times by 40% to 50%.

We got subscription model licenses three or four weeks ago. Now, we are setting up enrollment for other products of Worksoft. It is recommended that we should do our migration and upgrades in a test enrollment environment first, then move to a production environment. 

In general, they changed their license model. Before you had to buy licenses for each component, and now they changed it so you can buy a license and use it for nearly all their applications.

We also evaluated Tricentis Tosca. Their pricing includes all their training. This is free of cost to everyone, even users without a Tosca license. If Worksoft came up with something similar, I think that they would get more customers.

We haven't bought any projects or use cases to automate Salesforce.

Worksoft Process Capture is a tool that captures the user actions. Usually, the functional consultant knows the functionality that has to be automated. We then have to install the feature on his machine for him to use Process Capture. The challenge is, since they will be unaware of the tool, we first need to educate him how to use the tool. Because of this challenge, we aren't using Process Capture right now.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10. We are very satisfied with the solution.

Our primary use case is for SAP regression testing. We wanted to have our all SAP processes for regression to be optimized using Worksoft Certify. It took around one year for us to take that process and learn how it works, gradually improving it until now. 

We do regression testing on a weekly basis using Worksoft Certify. This does not include just SAP. We are also using the web-based tools when we are integrating end-to-end processes. When we are moving within one end-to-end process, we are shuffling between all the scripts and then going back to SAP. It works quite well.

At some point, we will have an RPA initiative to use this solution. For example, we need to obtain data from our development environment to check reports and verify them, then create transactions using Worksoft Certify.

We have more than 160 end-to-end processes. In our repository, we can have one transaction process or more than 40. There are big end-to-end processes and there are smaller ones. There are processes that can take hours to run and there are processes that can take a couple of minutes to run, but most of the end-to-end processes have multiple transactions. In weekly/monthly releases, we don't have any type of manual testing. We are just relying on Worksoft Certify for its test automation.

We also use Worksoft Certify for test automation in projects.

For scheduling, we are using an Execution Manager from Worksoft Certify.

Our business and IT users have been able to use the Capture feature, even without knowledge of testing tools. We have different IT people from each business area, like production planning or material managements. These people, without even having any knowledge of programming or Certify, just need to know how to use Capture. They are using it because it's really easy to use. You just have to initiate a Capture and do the same work that you are doing every day. Then, Capture will record everything.

You don't need to do any coding when creating end-to-end processes; it's a codeless because it is just recording. We don't need a specific person (or multiple persons) to work with the processes to do coding for the automation, which saves time. It increases the confidence of the process owner or IT person working on it because we provide them the capability to record their own process without doing any coding and just using Capture. They are confident that whatever they have recorded is their own process. It's not someone else recording their processes. The test automator can polish that process, but we are not recording it since they initiated the Capture. Overall, this saves time.

It has reduced our test maintenance time by more than 50 percent because we don't have to do manual test processes. We have saved over 150 man-hours monthly. It has increased our delivery times. We went from 200 man-hours down (three weeks work time frame) to approximately 40 man-hours (three days work time frame).

Using Worksoft Certify, we have found and repaired more bugs, though not that many. Users cannot manipulate information during the process. We schedule our tests at the night time and leave them working. Next morning, when we come into the office, we just check our system. These tests are pass and fail. For the failed test, we have screen captures where we can go and check the screenshot to know what the issue is. No one has to sit in front of the screen when you are running regression tests or scheduling them. I can schedule them and continue with my other daily routine work.

It is really good if you are using Capture in the new version of 11, where you can have a visual of the capture. The new version is much better. If I am using the Capture, I just initiate the capture and start working normally with my transactions. Capture will start recording all the steps that I'm working with. Before sending that one, I can even edit the capture. I can add more steps or remove them. This is one of the best features that Worksoft Certify has.

Worksoft Certify is really easy to use. You don't need any programming skills. If you just know a bit about programming, then you can easily use it because most things record by themselves. 

It's fully capable to automate testing for packaged applications, like SAP and Salesforce. You can do whatever you want and even create one specific process. For this process, you can create multiple processes. For the one transactional process that you have automated, you can utilize that process in multiple other processes too. 

They have different tools for different types of documentation, like Certify and Analyzer (for business processes). In Certify, from the repository, you can get really good, detailed documentation of what has been recorded, how it works, what steps have to be taken, and what data to use for every step. From a documentation point of view, it is valuable and can be used for future training.

Worksoft Certify's ability to build tests is really easy. You can build as many tests as you want with Capture. It is very reusable to apply one process to multiple processes. 

The scripting methodology is easy to learn. It is easy to maintain because it is presented in a simple, narrative way. You don't need to know programming.

When you are using an older version of Worksoft Certify, like version 10, Capture will be running under your status bar. Then, you don't know what transactions you are currently recording. In the old version, you don't have the visual of the capture.

It works well with other tools, but there is some integration required with Solution Manager. If you are using test repository in your solution manager, then there is no direct integration between Solution Manager and Worksoft Certify. 

There is an improvement needed in the reporting within Worksoft Certify. We have either a detailed report or a summary report. We don't have report that can be used for training purposes. A different tool from Worksoft has to be utilized for this.

Worksoft Certify needs a bit of improvement for its web-based processes. It can be difficult because you need to recall the maps, then you still have to add-on for your browser. When you are using the browser-based testing, you cannot even move your mouse or do anything on your system when you are using the web-based testing. Therefore, it needs a bit of improvement on that side. While it does work, it needs improvement. From the SAP side, there is nothing better than Worksoft Certify. However, from the web-based, we are moving towards Fiori. SAP will soon be totally web-based. For Fiori, they need to be great with SAP testing. Thus, Worksoft has to improve the web-based testing part for Certify.

They have a lot of versions coming out every year, like four or five versions. They need to reduce this number. There should be one or two versions every year with add-ons, if necessary. Because if you want to upgrade your Worksoft Certify from an older version to a newer version, you almost need to reset the solution and we don't have that much time. We cannot dedicate four times a year to having the newest version of Worksoft Certify. Though, if I don't need the need changes or improvements, I can skip the most recent upgrade until the next version comes out.

Almost six years. We started launching it in 2014.

It is very stable; nothing happens.

Two people are responsible for maintenance, deployments, and updates: the test automation administrator and the test automator. One is mainly responsible for all the administration and maintenance of the scripts and everything that goes into the integration with SAP Solution Manager. The other guy mostly works with the execution of the script. 

The solution enabled us to scale up testing because we don't need to use manually testing. We are also using it for project testing. 

There are overall 12 to 13 users. We have three users identified for test automation. We have another 10 users who use different packages from models of SAP. They use it to capture their processes.

If you have any issues, cases, or discussion, you can go on the Community portal and ask from there. They have people and technical experts there who can provide you with solutions. It's one of the best things that Worksoft Certify is doing. You can discuss with others at different companies, or possibly the technical experts from Worksoft Certify if we have an issue. Then, we can open a case directly there. 

I would rate the technical support as a nine out of 10. They are very good and available at all the times. The technical support can assist through the Community portal. You can also email them directly. Their response time to contact you back is 24 hours.

Before Worksoft Certify, we needed almost two weeks or more of regression testing to move our changes from regression to production. We were spending more than 10,000 euros for that on top of our man-hours. Even then, it was not proper testing because the user could manipulate things because they were using manual testing. For example, if something was not working, they could try to use some other way to work it. After the implementation of Worksoft Certify, we have increased our scope for regression and have more than 162 processes from all the models. We have also increased the test coverage and have less issues.

We went from two weeks and 200 man-hours to three days of testing. Within three days, we can test for the monthly release. For the weekly release, we need maybe one day or less using Worksoft Certify to test our releases and move them to production. It has really improved the collaboration between teams and our dependencies between various processes. On top of that, it provides really quick reports and results for management. We are capable of providing quicker reports and results for regression, like, "What has happened? What has gone wrong? Is everything okay to move to production?" Management is also very happy with it because it is saving time and money.

I was not involved in the process.

We have seen ROI with its efficient reporting and ability to provide results to management. It has also increased collaboration between different teams, such as, purchasing and sales.

We have used Worksoft Certify as an RPA tool when we have needed to create the master data or upload some documents. This saves a lot of time. It can reduce 10,000 transactions from weeks down to a day and a half.

Purchasing and licensing are okay. Go for the perpetual licenses. In that way, you own a license, then you can purchase maintenance and support on top of that, so you don't have to pay every year for it. Even if you don't want it a contract with Worksoft Certify in the future, you will have your own license of it. Then, if your usage is not that much, you can have one or two perpetual licenses. However, if you want to run your processes, you will need more licenses, e.g., using the run-only licenses. They are really cheap compared to the full licensing.

There are multiple licenses available from Worksoft depending on your requirements. You can take any one of them, and they are really good. For example, if we are using five to 10 perpetual licenses where we need to update or create scripts and run parallelly, simultaneously multiple scripts with just one license, it will take months for us to run 162 processes. Therefore, we have run-only licenses that we use when it comes to executing our test scripts on releases.

It is integrated with SAP. It's one of the best tool to be used if you want to automize your testing for SAP. No other tool is as good as Worksoft Certify.

I have evaluated other tools, but I find Certify really tops them. Most of them are using the command line-based tools. With some of them, you need a expert who knows how to do programming. For Worksoft Certify, you don't need programming skills. For the SAP GUI, I haven't found another tool that can work as efficiently with SAP as Worksoft Certify does.

You just have to be clear about your processes and define them before going to capture one. If you capture some processes, you can just easily manipulate and merge them to the other processes. It is really easy to use Certify, but you do need to be focused. There is also integration with Execution Manager, which can be useful when you are using Worksoft Certify for scheduling and other things.

It is not that easy to work with SAP Fiori as compared to SAP's GUI.

It can be used with non-SAP platforms. 

Overall, the solution is a nine out of 10. For just the SAP GUI, it is a 10 out of 10. For the other tools, like the web part and Fiori, it is about an eight out of 10.