Why Elfware?
We solve IT delivery challenges through low code and automation.
On time, on budget
The best thing we can do for businesses is to keep our word. Expect no last-minute surprises or delays, we do what we say.
An exit strategy
We engage, problem-solve and provide you with automated tools and knowledge before stepping aside.The power’s always in your hands.
Long-term solutions
We’re not here to provide interim assistance that leaves you requiring more help and investment for the future. Everything we do is a building block towards better automation and our problem-solving approach considers your tomorrows.
Oracle Retail
When a US Specialty Retailer needed to evaluate Oracle Retail v16 for an upgrade, they engaged elfware to provide a prototype based on their production Oracle Retail v11 data.
Despite the significant changes between the Oracle Retail releases, our team delivered in just 2 weeks!
When a globally recognised ecommerce brand invested in Oracle Retail they selected elfware to deliver the Data Migration stream utilising elfware templates for Oracle Retail v16.
What could a set of validations for base Oracle Retail business rules do to rapidly stabilise your data and code set purity and give your testing stream a big leap forward?
Ask us about elfware base validation suite for Oracle Retail
Start your Oracle Retail implementation within days and remove project activity blocks with On Demand Oracle Retail environments.
Data
Data typically filters into and throughout an application estate via interfaces:
• developed over a range of time.
• implemented by teams focusing on different source and target criteria and mappings.
• designed, built and QA’d by analysts and developers potentially no longer with the organisation.
• not consistently maintained to comply with evolving business and data rules.
This can result in discrepancies between the answers provided to business questions by different applications – undermining stakeholder confidence in their IT systems.
To mitigate against this elfware provide semantic matching between application datasets. Starting with related datasets our team will:
• identify the measures which can be compared semantically between the datasets.
• build a set of mappings to aggregate to the semantic measures.
• generate data reconciliation code to perform the reconciliation.
• orchestrate so a single reconciliation chain can be scheduled to conditionally execute on an agreed cadence.
• publish the execution results to the elfCafé cloud platform for visualisation of current data consistency and trend analysis.
We help you to protect stakeholder confidence in IT systems.
A global retailer asked elfware to construct bulk XML and JSON representations of complex Oracle Retail RIB messages.
Why?
• Bulk consumption of RIB XML messages for cutover
• Directly seed an Azure Cosmos integration layer with JSON representations using the MongoDB API.
Ask us how we delivered.
Source data for integration and data migration activities is often incomplete, incorrect or duplicated.
Cleansing, enriching and deduplicating at source is ideal, but often time and resource intensive – and not timeous. And of course, once fixed it may get out of kilter again.
If not smoothly handled the impact of errors and delays relating to source data quality issues can be significant on either production environments and support, as it can be on project activities.
Ask our team how we apply SmartData to filter and stage errors, version and persist data resolutions and seamlessly deploy back into key data flows.
When business and data rules are not uniformly applied holistically to an application, data integrity violations naturally follow.
elfware will start with a set of provided integrity rules, or collate a set from existing artefacts, to:
• build a set of mappings providing rule coverage
• generate integrity validation code
• orchestrate so a single validation chain can be scheduled to conditionally execute on an agreed cadence
• publish the execution results to the elfCafé cloud platform for visualisation of current quality and coverage as well as trend analysis.
For some third-party software applications our teams bring to bear existing validation collateral for base integrity rules. This provides a starting point for iterating toward 100% compliant data quality and reducing TCO through lower support overheads.
Operational Reporting can be a significant challenge when implementing new systems – it is too often left as a “Fast” follower providing insufficient visualisation, too late.
elfware solves this challenge with elfCafé.io visualisation.
Automation
That’s right, implement and run complex IT systems with the elfCafé No/Low Code platform.
Imagine for a moment what a no/low code platform for complex systems can mean …
An analyst defines rules, mappings and dependencies, and the platform will generate the rest. So, your key people don’t just make decisions; the decisions result in the code to implement and test themselves.
Want to strip back your IT project and application support teams, remove bottlenecks surrounding key team members and reduce your reliance on external IT resources, all whilst improving your IT delivery quality and agility?
The agility for an organisation to respond rapidly to opportunities and threats relies upon an IT delivery capability for continuous evolution of application business logic and API’s.
However new and modified API’s and application business logic represent a risk to application stability, as does the possibility for untested states to arise within an application. And, given the generally uncountable number of possible states in an application, it is often not feasible or desirable to test every state before it occurs.
To address these challenges elfware provide a point and click capability to:
• Map to new and modified program unit specifications
• production/test dynamic datasets
• boundary testing
• specific test cases
• expected results
• Stipulate
• data sample sizes and spread (statics, dynamic, indexed, random, weighted etc)
• persist vs non-persist
• error thresholds
• Orchestrate for regular/event-based execution
• Publish test execution results for visualisation
Benefits include:
• Support for:
• Test Driven development
• Continuous Testing
• CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery)
• Increased IT delivery
• Identification and testing of data states not covered in structured testing – before they cause harm
• Reduced TCO through lower defect rates
• IT ability to support an Agile Business
For some third-party software applications our teams bring to bear existing unit test collateral for base API’s and business logic layers. This capability supports the ability to perform regular patch updates and upgrades for the third-party applications, ensuring detailed changes to application processing which no longer deliver expected results can be identified automatically.
When a UK based Fashion Retailer decided upon a phased approach to implementing Oracle Retail, they engaged elfware to generate the integration required to support a parallel run without building new integration from source legacy systems.
Leveraging an initial set of data migration bulk extracts from legacy, elfware implemented a delta process to identify the scope and nature of changes. From these our team simulated foundation, item, price and purchasing interface ingestion into Oracle Retail, simulating user-based entry of these changes.
Automated quarantine and quarantine release processes supported user enrichment of data which, along with end to end entity reconciliation, enabled a robust, automated execution of the parallel run.
This approach allowed for dependent future-state RIB and flat file integration to be executed, including sales and logistics related integration. The result was the ability to leverage future state processes such as Sales Auditing, Merchandise Financial Planning, Item Planning, G/L visualisation and Data Warehouse reporting, without eroding legacy application capabilities or requiring dual entry.
It successfully provided the mitigation required by the client for their transition phase, with the flexibility to deliver project components as they became ready rather than delaying for an all or nothing, big bang activity reliant upon short and infrequent business delivery windows.
elfware Automated Testing Services provide a seamless synchronisation of batch, integration, program unit and API flows with the verification of expected results and automatic publication of test outcomes.
elfware Testing Services for Oracle Retail additionally leverage not only the elfCafé automation platform, but our deep knowledge and collateral relating to Oracle Retail, making elfware a clear leader in Automated Testing Services for Oracle Retail.
Ask us how we can help deliver End to End integration test chains to support CI/CD for your complex IT application.
elfware’s agile approach to implementing complex applications such as Oracle Retail is underpinned by our ability to define scope, orchestrate dependencies and map decisions using a no/low code approach.
Business or Solution Analysts not only make the decisions, but also generate and implement code and verify the results.
How can we help reduce the scope and cost of your third-party software implementation?
Fundamental to Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery are ubiquitous automated tests and the orchestration of these into the release process.
For third party ERP systems the sheer complexity means it can be a monumental effort to implement these – so the effort is seldom justified for implementation projects or maintenance phases beyond a small number of key flows.
At elfware we start with a substantial base set of orchestrated validations and tests for Oracle Retail, then it’s a virtual point and click approach to identify additional modules and add scenarios and verifications for each – using either static data for fixed scenarios and boundary testing or dynamic data selected from production to represent undocumented or unexpected states.
Interested in CI/CD for Oracle Retail?
Level 1, 53 Walker Street
North Sydney, NSW 2060
Phone: +61 2 7228 0002
email: contact@elfware.com