AI-powered Test Automation Platform Addresses Critical Operational Challenges Across the Cloud ERP Lifecycle
Opkey, the leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) continuous test automation platform for enterprise systems, announced that it has raised $47 million in Series B funding led by PeakSpan Capital, with continued support from existing investors. This substantial investment will fuel Opkey’s mission to deliver continuous assurance and streamline cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transformation programs, enabling Opkey to accelerate product development, with a focus on enhancing AI capabilities and expanding support for additional ERP platforms; grow its sales and marketing teams to expand market presence globally; and invest in research and development to pioneer the emerging “ERP Ops” category, providing a common data fabric for successful ERP transformation and modernization programs.
“Opkey’s AI-driven platform empowers Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to ensure successful ERP transformation and modernization programs, by revolutionizing the way enterprises approach Cloud ERP migration, ” said Pankaj Goel, CEO and co-founder of Opkey. “This funding will allow us to further enhance our technology and expand our reach, helping more organizations seamlessly migrate their legacy ERP systems to the cloud while ensuring continuous quality and performance, given its criticality to business outcomes.”
According to Bloomberg, the cloud ERP systems will likely be the biggest growth driver of the SaaS industry over next 10 years, slated to become a $73 Billion market by 2026. However, an alarmingly high majority of these ERP modernization programs fail. McKinsey reports that 75% of ERP transformation projects fail, often because IT teams are unable to scale ERP testing.
Enterprises modernizing their ERP stack also often grapple with the growing challenge of “SaaS Mess,” due to implementation of a mix of best-of-breed point applications that are constantly updating and require continuous testing to ensure that end to end business processes are working as expected. In a typical enterprise, 10-12 ERP point solutions are combined to achieve an end-to-end business process. Gartner refers to this trend as composable ERP and predicts that by 2026, 35% of product-centric enterprises will achieve high composability in their ERP applications, integration, data and security, but will struggle with the operational overhead introduced by this approach.
Antiquated, manual approaches to ERP software testing create massive levels of risk to business continuity and the success of transformation programs. There have been well documented instances of ERP transformation program failures causing huge financial and reputational losses to enterprises like The ERP implementation failure costing National Grid a staggering $585 million and Revlon stock prices falling as much as 6% because of losses incurred as result of faulty ERP implementation. It’s evident that enterprise applications teams now require a more modern and continuous way to ensure operational continuity across enterprise cloud applications.
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By leveraging AI and machine learning, Opkey significantly reduces the time and effort required for comprehensive testing of ERP applications. Opkey’s AI-powered ERP testing assistant (Wilfred) leverages Opkey’s patent pending genAI Test mining algorithm and dynamically generates tests based on the client configurations and customizations, driving massive improvements in coverage, adapting to updates in business processes and applications, and delivering greater assurance through continuous testing. This enables enterprises to push through ERP changes 50% faster, while lowering defect rates by over 70%.
“We’re excited to partner with Pankaj and the Opkey team as they pioneer the next frontier of innovation in ERP modernization, delivering unparalleled assurance through continuous, AI-enabled test automation,” said Sanket Merchant, Partner, PeakSpan Capital. “As thematic B2B software investors, we understand the criticality of ERP and other enterprise applications (e.g., HRIS, CRM), which represent significant investments and operate as the central nervous system powering global business operations. We believe that, given the inefficiencies that exist today in all phases of the ERP life cycle, a new category of solutions will emerge, utilizing AI to address the high failure rate of cloud transformation and automate critical areas of implementation, testing, and support. Solutions like Opkey’s are mission critical for achieving continuous assurance in the delivery of technology that yields optimal business outcomes. We could not be more energized to support Opkey’s vision for ERP Ops, which will help CIOs with their ERP transformation and modernization initiatives by providing a common data fabric, resilience in their technology strategy, and optimize table stakes business performance.”
Opkey currently has more than 200 enterprise customers, 72% of which are ranked in the Fortune 1000. The company also partners with large systems integrators (SIs) like KPMG, Huron, and PwC to bring the power of AI to their implementation and managed services projects.
“KPMG continues to drive the highest quality outcomes for our clients by leveraging Opkey’s industry-leading test automation solutions for SaaS platforms,” said Ryan Burns, Principal, KPMG Lighthouse. “Our alliance with Opkey is innovating with generative AI to transform test automation for our clients’ ERP implementations and help reduce risk, improve efficiency and build confidence from inception through go-live and beyond.”
Source: PRWeb