Professional Services
Microsoft Dynamics AX

Business Needs

As for Solutions On-Site Services, Sodexo creates, manages and implements comprehensive solutions within a wide portfolio of services provided directly to the client, including food, construction management and maintenance – among others. Related to this portfolio, Sodexo is looking to become a major strategic partner for companies, organizations and institutions which aim to bring out solutions and provide quality of life and improvement to people’s management, processes and infrastructure.

With a high added value, Sodexo Motivation Solutions provides the market with a large portfolio of solutions with the aim of improving the quality of life in each of its categories of services: as employee benefits, incentives, recognition, labor welfare and subsidies, which allows organizations to improve overall performance by motivating each of their employees.

For the past 17 years, Sodexo had had a resource planning solution SAP ERP. That solution’s cost, lack of flexibility and high maintenance costs, should be gradually changed to implement Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 at global and regional level in Latin America (Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Peru), which should include Finance, Purchasing and Logistics and Operations as the pillars of Sodexo processes. These pillars began in implementing a first phase Finance, Purchasing and Logistics, followed by Operations. Chile was the first country, then Peru, Colombia and finally Argentina.

The company was looking for a Regional Partner with the ability to cover the Project at the level of resources consulting, technology and extensive experience and knowledge of Dynamics AX 2009, which should unify methodologies and knowledge of Core defined by Sodexo, in order to run Rollout of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 in the region. With own Core definitions, complemented with local expertise in legal requirements and local processes.

The Sodexo’s Core capacities partially covers their local needs, therefore Sodexo was searching for a partner with the knowledge, coverage and regional expertise to implement the project in all matters relating to each country’s needs, support capacity and responsibility for the country’s customizations.

Sodexo required each country to have a local partner to implement their financial process (General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Advanced billing to customers, among others), as well as the business process – Logistics (Catalogs and purchase agreements to suppliers, distribution centers) and, finally, Finance II to the billing process with Microsoft Dynamics AX; such implementation must complement and not interfere with the core business of Sodexo and other operations.

The Partner should follow the Core’s architectural and functional guidelines and align with the methodology of both Sodexo and partner. Similarly, train users with regard to all processes, and implementing the country’s customizations.

Fundamental, among its needs, for Sodexo, was the operation supporting aspect after going out live, a Partner in charge of the requirements, cases and / or requests that eventually might arise in the daily operation, a Partner to add value and knowledge to the business.

Solution

Sodexo, having core business defined at a global level, made the decision to unify all processes with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, managed and supported by AlfaPeople, Microsoft Partner present in 15 countries, whose characteristics and resources are strong enough to implement and support a regional Project, and enough experience at local and global levels.

The first country that led such implementation was Sodexo Chile, the country with the largest operation, a project of approximately 4500 hours and 30 customizations to support local operation. Sodexo itself does not build those local customizations, instead they relied on AlfaPeople as a local partner, essential for development and support issues.

AlfaPeople also supported Sodexo Chile with the implementation of the financial process, including Banking, Fixed Assets and Accounts Payable along with country’s customizations, such as integration with electronic billing, legal reports, financial reports and Localization Chile to meet the requirements of SII (Internal Revenue System). As well as a second phase of the project, the process of sales and logistics, home to the centralized recipe management, centralized orders management of sites and, as relevant process, a centralized planning matrix minutes and shopping site, process which no other country has. And the last step, Financial II, for the billing process with Microsoft Dynamics AX. All these processes are specific to the business locally.

Parallel to support and implementation of processes, AlfaPeople carried out education and training to end users, and connected the guidelines defined in the Core together with the methodology and the new processes and customizations resulting from the implementation and adaptation to Microsoft Dynamics AX in Sodexo Chile. AlfaPeople carried out training and education of all the solution users, and provided full support to the operation, development and eventual requirements from users after the project’s launch.

Benefits

Integration of all business processes on a single platform

Thanks to its experience and local knowledge, AlfaPeople supports Sodexo in integrating financial and commercial and logistics processes, along with proper legal standards required for Chile, unifying all systems in Microsoft Dynamics AX, so operation and support will be easier and adjusted to local needs, requirements and Core.

Lower Costs of Ownership (TCO)

By implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX as a single technology platform and having integrated all of its business processes, Sodexo is able to reduce maintenance costs, integration and support.

Centralized information

Sodexo may access all information online in a quick and reliable way to support the performance measurement of their business processes and support local decisions, thanks to Microsoft Dynamics AX as a single platform for managing all processes.