Testing ‘Made to Order’ Digital Buyers Journey Across Platforms

Profile

Founded in 1952, Sheetz is a pioneering, family-owned convenience store chain with over 600 locations across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. As a result of its Total Customer Focus approach to business, it is an early adopter of innovative customer-centric technology. Sheetz needed a test automation platform that would support the agile delivery of new software and services to accelerate the pace of its digital transformation strategy.

Accelerating the Delivery of Mobile Applications

The Sheetz team undertook a thorough review of the myriad of test automation solutions and selected Eggplant as a result of its comprehensive and intuitive platform that can test any system. This unique capability, coupled with its shared ethos around understanding and delighting customers, made Eggplant the best choice for Sheetz. The team quickly recognized that the platform would support all of its ambitious plans in the coming months and years.

One platform to Test Everything & Anything

An essential requirement for the test automation solution was the ability to test multiple device sets and platforms, spanning in-store and mobile along with different mediums, including voice ordering and scanners. The team was insearch of a way to accelerate the delivery of robust digital products and applications.

To achieve this required, both reducing the manual testing burden on the consumer digital team and the regression testing window so that software can be released more quickly. The aim is to deploy Eggplant’s intelligent platform, that automates end to end testing across any platform, to reduce time required for regression testing.

With the net result being Sheetz could dramatically speed up the delivery of software and focus on developing new digital apps instead of lengthy manual testing.

Tapping into the Power of AI and Fast-Tracking Automation

Consumer Digital applications, such as mobile, online ordering, and delivery are at the heart of Sheetz’s digital strategy. Though very early into this stage of the automation journey with Eggplant’s technology, the digital services team aim to quickly automate the testing of its mobile apps and ordering systems. This will result in updates released more frequently. As Sheetz looks to introduce API testing, it anticipates another uptick in quality gains.

The New Normal

The Coronavirus pandemic has profoundly impacted the entire retail industry and Sheetz has used the time to focus on better serving its customers. While everyone is working remotely, it has seen a positive impact on focus and productivity, enabling the release of many new digital services to support the ‘new normal’.

Sheetz has been able to quickly roll out mobile checkout, curbside pick-up, and integrations with third-party delivery services. The Eggplant platform has aided Sheetz swift pivot to the new retail reality.

Sheetz is now running internal demonstrations of Eggplant to help educate other team members on how automation can transform both the speed and quality of software and applications.