Unlocking RISE with SAP and Tricentis: Quality assurance in your cloud journey

As organizations across industries strive to modernize and streamline their operations, cloud adoption becomes a strategic imperative. SAP’s RISE with SAP offers a holistic solution to help businesses simplify their digital transformation by transitioning to the cloud. But for any transformation to succeed, maintaining high standards of quality is critical. That’s where Tricentis, a leader in continuous testing, is embedded in the process, ensuring that quality assurance (QA) is not just an afterthought but a fundamental part of every stage of digital transformation.

In this blog we will provide an overview of RISE with SAP is and its key components, such as SAP Activate and SAP Cloud ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), as well as how Tricentis solutions fit into the overall picture.

What is RISE with SAP?

RISE with SAP is an all-in-one business transformation offering that enables you to move to the cloud with ease, modernize your ERP, and leverage the best of SAP technologies in building your intelligent enterprise. It’s not just about moving to SAP S/4HANA—it’s about rethinking processes, optimizing business operations, and gaining agility.

Ultimately, RISE with SAP brings together a comprehensive and coherent collection of best practices to help you transform with confidence and achieve your business objectives. This includes an enriched SAP Activate and enhancements to SAP Cloud ALM.

The approach encompasses the following phases:

1. Discover and evaluate: Build the clean core foundation for a successful transformation
2. Prepare and plan: Define scope and timelines with clear tasks and execution plans
3. Move and deploy: Go live with the cloud operational model
4. Run and innovate: Stay up-to-date and ready to take advantage of new capabilities

The importance of quality gates in RISE with SAP

With such a comprehensive transformation, quality control is essential throughout the implementation lifecycle. RISE with SAP follows an agile methodology, and now includes various quality gates at the end of each SAP Activate phase as you can see in the picture above. These quality gates help ensure that your project remains on track and meets key performance indicators (KPIs) at every phase.

• Quality gates in a RISE project are critical milestones where the project is reviewed to:
• Validate that processes and systems are working as expected
• Detect defects early in the implementation cycle
• Ensure that the transition to SAP S/4HANA, business processes, and integrations are performing as intended

Skipping these crucial quality checks can lead to delays, budget overruns, and missed business objectives. This is where continuous testing and quality assurance best practices by Tricentis become invaluable.

The role of SAP Activate in RISE with SAP

A key enabler of the RISE with SAP methodology is the SAP Activate framework. SAP Activate provides a structured, agile methodology that guides businesses through the implementation of SAP solutions, including SAP S/4HANA, but extends far beyond just ERP transformations. It encompasses best practices, implementation tools, and a detailed roadmap to help organizations successfully deploy any SAP solution, from cloud migrations to hybrid environments and industry-specific applications.

SAP Activate offers predefined processes, accelerators, and detailed project management tools that ensure a smooth and efficient implementation. In the context of RISE with SAP, it serves as a blueprint for transitioning to SAP S/4HANA, but it also supports additional SAP projects such as business process intelligence, integration with third-party tools, and innovations in the SAP Business Technology Platform.

By following SAP Activate’s iterative phases—Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, and Run—businesses ensure that quality gates, continuous testing, and go-live readiness are systematically addressed throughout their entire SAP journey.

In the below illustration you can see how Tricentis quality assurance and continuous testing practices are included in every phase of the Activate framework including the establishment of a high-level test strategy as early as the Discover phase.

Below you can also see how these quality gates translate into the various SAP Activate roadmaps that you can find in the SAP Activate Roadmap Viewer.

SAP Cloud ALM: Streamlining implementation and operations

An essential component of the RISE with SAP methodology is SAP Cloud ALM. SAP Cloud ALM is a cloud-based tool designed to help businesses manage the entire lifecycle of their SAP solutions, from implementation to ongoing operations. It provides real-time visibility into project progress, offering tools for monitoring, task management, and problem resolution across the RISE with SAP ecosystem.

For implementation, SAP Cloud ALM integrates with SAP Activate, ensuring that every phase—from Discover to Run—is executed with clear visibility into milestones, risks, and performance metrics. During operations, it delivers automated insights into the health of systems, enabling continuous optimization and proactive management. As a cloud-native ALM solution it is crucial for RISE with SAP customers, as it simplifies the management of complex cloud landscapes while supporting both SAP S/4HANA and other SAP applications. By providing an end-to-end view of the transformation journey, SAP Cloud ALM ensures alignment between business goals and IT execution, facilitating smoother deployments and sustained operational excellence.

SAP Test Automation by Tricentis integrated with SAP Cloud ALM

Since 2020, SAP has been offering Tricentis solutions as part of its Solution Extensions portfolio and has laid out a long-term plan for collaborative development. Together, SAP and Tricentis have integrated SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing with SAP Solution Manager.

Now, SAP Test Automation by Tricentis (STA) is available within SAP Cloud ALM with seamless integration further enhancing the test automation capabilities in the Cloud.

Together, as SaaS products, SAP Cloud ALM and STA by Tricentis provide a full application lifecycle management experience to SAP Enterprise Support Customers.

How does Tricentis support the RISE with SAP Methodology?

By embedding testing throughout the transformation journey, Tricentis makes quality assurance a fundamental element of the application lifecycle. This approach supports ongoing improvements and innovation, speeding up the overall transformation while aligning seamlessly with the objectives of the RISE with SAP methodology.

In today’s digital transformation landscape, constant change is inevitable, and that demands continuous testing. Tricentis automates and integrates testing across both SAP and third-party enterprise solutions, enabling organizations to implement changes rapidly without increasing business risk. By positioning testing as a driver of innovation, Tricentis helps businesses stay ahead with new technologies and best practices that deliver value and success.

Tricentis solutions ensure that testing aligns with business priorities, keeping critical processes running smoothly in ever-changing environments. Its user-friendly test authoring tools improve efficiency by identifying and resolving major defects early in the project lifecycle. Additionally, Tricentis takes a comprehensive approach to tracking and managing risks in software rollouts, allowing organizations to address potential issues before they impact production. This proactive strategy helps reduce expensive post-production fixes and limits disruptions to essential business operations.

Benefits of integrating Tricentis with RISE with SAP

The marriage of RISE with SAP and Tricentis unlocks numerous advantages for businesses:

• Faster time-to-market: Automated testing drastically reduces the time needed to identify defects and validate changes, speeding up the overall project timeline
• Improved test coverage: With automation, more scenarios can be tested comprehensively in less time, improving the quality of the final product
• Early defect detection: By running tests early and continuously throughout the project lifecycle, Tricentis helps identify and fix defects before they affect go-live, reducing risks
• Reduced costs: Automation cuts down the costs associated with manual testing and the risks of post-go-live issues

Conclusion

Agility is at the core of RISE with SAP. Whether organizations choose to run their transformation in sprints or through continuous delivery, having a robust testing strategy ensures smooth, disruption-free development. Tricentis complements this agile approach by automating test cases in alignment with each sprint, ensuring continuous feedback and quality checks.

By embedding Tricentis into your RISE with SAP transformation, you ensure that quality assurance is not just a checkpoint but a continuous, automated process. This partnership enables businesses to reduce risk, accelerate delivery, and ensure that the journey to SAP S/4HANA is smooth and successful.