Functional Testing of Web-Based CRM Applications Using the Black-Box Testing Method

Abstract

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications play a central role in supporting sales, lead, and customer-service processes for modern organizations, making the functional reliability of such systems critical to business operations. This study evaluates the functional quality of a web-based CRM application using the black-box testing method, combining Equivalence Partitioning (EP), Boundary Value Analysis (BVA), and Decision Table Testing (DTM) techniques across seven core functional modules: user authentication, lead management, contact management, sales pipeline, task and activity management, reporting and dashboard, and email integration. A total of 174 test cases were designed based on functional requirement specifications and executed manually over three testing cycles. In the first testing cycle, 126 of 174 test cases passed, yielding an overall pass rate of 72.2% and revealing 48 defects, including 6 critical, 14 major, 19 minor, and 9 cosmetic issues, predominantly related to input validation, session handling, and duplicate-lead detection. After defect remediation, a second cycle raised the pass rate to 90.9%, and a third verification cycle achieved a final pass rate of 98.2%, exceeding the project's 95% acceptance threshold. Functional suitability was further assessed against the ISO/IEC 25010 quality model, showing marked improvement in functional correctness and completeness across cycles. These results demonstrate that a structured black-box testing strategy combining EP, BVA, and DTM is effective in systematically uncovering functional defects in web-based CRM systems and in providing measurable evidence of software quality improvement prior to production release.