Project Summary
Inspired Testing improved laborious manual test processes at a luxury vehicle manufacturer through test automation that was executed after hours to save time and money. The Solution was reusable and adaptable and easy to transplant to other parts of the world where the same manual processes were still in effect.
Company
International automotive manufacturer
Industry
Automotive
Location
South Africa
Solution
Test Automation/Bot
Technology Stack

Client Overview
One of the world’s foremost luxury vehicle manufacturers needed to find a better way to compare and correlate spreadsheet data generated at its Germany headquarters with the front-end desktop systems use to configure vehicles in South Africa. Inspired Testing developed a unique software solution using its test automation expertise that saves the company days’ worth of time compared to its manual processes.
Problem statement
The client used a spreadsheet-based system to maintain all its product offerings, like market-related standard options, prices and plausibilities for each country. The Master data sheets, prepared in Germany, contain all product offerings and are maintained on the global portal by local service teams in each country. Each country is then responsible for taking the initial data for its market, which is sent to a test module for manual verification before it can be loaded on the front-end dealer portal.
Manually matching the data from a spreadsheet to a desktop is a time-consuming and laborious process. With a spreadsheet for each vehicle, and dozens of plausibilities for each vehicle (for example, which interior finishes are compatible with which interior options), ensuring accurate data transfer from spreadsheet to front-end is absolutely critical for the business.
The process, as it was, often took two to three days to verify whether the data was correct and that it accounted for all the possible plausibilities. It then had to be repeated for each spreadsheet for each vehicle.
Solution
Inspired Testing used its Ranorex skills to create a test automation solution to compare the prices and plausibilities of all vehicle codes from the Master data sheet to the dealer portal. The solution uses test packs -a spreadsheet that is filled in with data for each vehicle. The software then compares data in the test pack to the Master spreadsheet and generates a report that shows if the data is consistent.
The solution is almost like an engine that takes the spreadsheet, reads the data that is supposed to be there, and validates that data against the front end. It does this in three stages:
- a high-level overview checking of data standards;
- a comparison of prices of options between the Master spreadsheet and portal;
- checking the combination of all the various options.
Inspired Testing worked closely with the client team, doing standups every morning where the client would update Inspired Testing on its progress through reports from the test automation system, and discuss any additional testing functions they wanted to add.
Benefit to the client after implementation
The main benefit of the solution is time-saving. Testing can be scheduled to execute at any time, or on demand, so the client can make the most of the time that people are not at work, running it after hours if necessary. The solution is also reusable and adaptable, by simply adding a new car in a new test pack spreadsheet, which can then be validated by Ranorex. It currently takes about three days to manually complete the third stage but is now reduced by the Ranorex solution to as little as two hours.
Since the format of the Master spreadsheet is always the same, the solution can be easily transplanted to other parts of the world where the same manual process is still in effect. Inspired Testing is currently rolling out the system for the client in Taiwan and the Middle East, with ongoing talks to adapt it to other regions as well.