Case Study

Traveling to the Future

When one of the world's largest travel companies needed to modernize their technology and deal with the challenges of disparate monolithic systems across multiple markets, they turned to our team of IT experts. Through a comprehensive cloud modernization program, we helped this company overcome their challenges and improve their operations, resulting in increased efficiency, cost savings, and a better customer experience. Read on to learn more about how Sonata delivered real results for this global travel leader.

Springboard to Cushy Sales

The case study features an Australian e-commerce and retail company that faced challenges related to fraud prevention, lack of consolidated view of sales transactions, and manual processes. The company partnered with Sonata Software to modernize their selling platform using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure. The transformation resulted in improved business opportunities, cost optimization, and better customer experience. The implementation included automation, infrastructure services, and EDI support, and resulted in improved search performance and conversion rate.

Introduction

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, organizations need to be agile and highly responsive to step up and thrive in the long run. The case study showcases how a leading marketing and corporate communications company servicing over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries was facing financial visibility and profitability challenges due to disparate systems, manual data management, and non-standardized business processes. Sonata helped implement Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (FO) and provided shared services support, automation, and improved manageability and audits.

Challenges

The first hurdle was the migration of its existing legacy code base (on AX) to Dynamics 365, which was time-consuming, expensive, and required extensive manual effort. The struggle to migrate to the new platform within the specified timeframe was monumental.

An Intelligent Solution
Solution Components

Sonata recommended its Dynamics code migration tool, purpose-built to analyze code and automatically migrate it from an older version of AX to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. The tool helped reduce the overall effort by 22% when moving to extensions. The implementation included a range of customizations tailored to meet the project’s specific needs, helping the customer improve their operational efficiency and streamline processes

Results:

The D365 FO implementation chartered the path for visible impact for our customer, as witnessed in:

• Large-scale business integrations and a system to provide shared services support
• Automated processes driving new efficiency levels
• Improved manageability and audits
• Time Time-saving&O processes leading to optimization in total operations cost

Conclusion

Sonata's success stems from its best-in-class solution architecture, team expertise, agile approach, and optimized pricing and delivery models. Sonata's recommendations align with client businesses' core objectives for a modern, integration-friendly, marketing automation-supported platform that aids in faster scale-up of digital experiences and is flexible, intelligent, and affordable.

Sweet Smell of Success

Sonata lets leading fragrance houses focus on formulations by taking care of its IT infrastructure.

Tasty Outcomes

Sonata helps chicken chain meet aggressive cost-saving targets through infrastructure managed services.

Traveling Light

Sonata helps the European travel giant get rid of excess baggage by taking over its IT infrastructure management.

About the Customer

The client is a multinational software company headquartered in the United States. It is a well-known business solutions company that provides a wide range of industry-specific enterprise software solutions.

Problem Statement

The company wanted to grow their market share and take the lead in their market categories, but they were up against a number of obstacles, including:

Limited accessibility owing to a desktop programme
Complex user interfaces with usability difficulties
Limited scaling up and scaling out possibilities
Slow licencing and onboarding

solutions

Following the preliminary assessment, Sonata assisted the customer in developing a multitenant platform architecture on Azure that was extremely scalable and available and boosting the user experience

It's REST-based. All of the functionality of the .Net API Platform is exposed.
Angular-based modern SPA with rich and intuitive user interactions
Virtual Agent bot to give better app interactions
Common UX/UI Framework to design various applications uniformly for consistent UX

Business Benefits

Higher scalability
Improved usability and consistency throughout the portfolio of applications
High accessibility across a variety of form factors
Reduced user onboarding time
Lower customer cost of ownership

Tools & Tech:

Applicable Service Catalogues: UX Platform Engineering including Bots, API Platform Engineering (Consumption, Improvements)

Existing Tech landscape

Web API

Win Forms

MS SQL Server

Target Tech Landscape

WEB API

SQL

About the Company

The client is a multinational enterprise software corporation based in the United Kingdom with 6.1 million customers around the world. It has locations in 24 different countries. The company is the world's third-biggest seller of ERP software and the leading supplier to small businesses, serving as a one-stop shop for all ERP, CRM, and payroll solutions.

Problem Statement

The client had problems in three areas, and Sonata assisted the client in overcoming those obstacles. The customer wanted to broaden their reach by capitalising on the growing popularity of mobile devices. A wide range of ERP and related products must be mobile-enabled for all popular mobile platforms, such as iOS and Android. The proposed programme will enable small businesses to manage their accounts on the go using mobile devices.

The client needed a cross-platform mobile app to monitor their client's financial data and receive alerts. This would enable accountants to keep track of their clients while on the go. The client wanted to expand their reach among employees of small and medium-sized businesses in Europe, America, and Asia.

Solution

The main goal was to create a mobile-friendly platform that would work with iPhones and Android phones. This app was to be built using Xamarin, a cross-platform development environment with a single code base for iOS and Android. Sonata was critical in deciding to use the Xamarin platform for app development. The team successfully launched the mobile app in multiple international regions in one year.

Sonata assisted in the development of a mobile app that would work on both iPhone and Android devices. With a single code base, the app was to be written in C# and Xamarin. The forms worked on both iOS and Android devices. SQLite.NET ORM libraries were used for database operations, and Xuni Graph was used to create graphs and charts.

The final task was to work together on the development of a mobile app that integrates with the ERP in the backend to enable mobile sales. Traveling salesmen could use the app to access customer information, order management, invoicing, and quotations while on the road. In addition to the ability to view the product catalogue and promotions, these features were added. Components from Pagasus and Nephos were used. Maintenance of the iPad mobile sales app, development of a Windows 8.1 app, and integration with ERPs were also part of the scope of work.

Benefits

Because of the platform's scalability, a large number of mobile devices could be supported. The mobile app will allow small businesses to manage their invoices, expenses, payments, products, and services while on the go. The client was ecstatic because they were able to quickly roll out mobile apps for various regions, allowing them to begin gaining new clients through the mobile ecosystem.

The client was able to launch their mobile app in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, and Spain, opening up new commercial opportunities.

The mobile application was completed on time. The platform was not only ready for localization, but it also offered a rich user experience with multiple graphs and tooltips. The client wanted to rethink and improve their business processes and requirements. They were well aware that their newly acquired mobile enablement status had given them a competitive advantage.

Sonata finished the mobile app in three months, and the client was ready to increase their marketing efforts.

The scalable platform could support a large number of mobile devices. The tablet's mobile app provided the best platform for salespeople to provide real-time information to customers, anticipate customer orders, and deliver quotations directly from the tablet. Access to data at any time and on-the-go order management improved sales effectiveness. The client commended the team for its quality focus and teamwork.

Microsoft praised the Mobile Sales Windows 8 App for its adherence to the user interface and user experience. This is yet another victory for Team Sonata!

About the Client

Aareon is Europe's largest provider of software for commercial and social real estate companies, as well as outsourcing and consultancy. Aareon has 36 locations in 7 European countries and 1,500 employees who serve over 3,000 real estate companies that manage 10 million VHEs. Aareon solutions are now used by approximately 50,000 people in Europe.

Problem Statement

The vision of Aareon is to be the most innovative solution provider in the property industry by enabling Digital Transformation.

Stay more relevant to the needs of the real estate market for Tenant satisfaction, Sustainability, Anywhere / anywhere, anytime
Lead the market with simplified and easy-to-manage systems, cost optimization, and leveraging new business models

Solution

Sonata assisted Aareon NL in its digital transformation journey. Sonata upgraded Aareon ERP from on-premise AX 2012 to the cloud-based Dynamics 365 platform. The design and execution of the test programme were aligned to the single commercial version of Microsoft, allowing for faster and more robust deployments to production while adhering to the vision of evergreen ERP through automation.

Key highlights of the existing AX2012 solution:

Huge codebase with intrusive customizations: 27,000+ customised Objects
Total functional modules – 20, 30+ integrations
Limited documentation in Dutch language
Best practices deviations in legacy solutions

Implementation approach for Dynamics 365 F&O

Upgrade: Created a native Cloud platform in record time by implementing an extensibility framework and redesigning 5000+ objects.
Based on the Microsoft CAR report, we ensured compliance by resolving 5,000+ errors and warnings from existing AX2012 solutions.
Improved the product by incorporating some of the key features. Workspace and Power BI were implemented to improve user experiences and flexibility.
To ensure test coverage, 1800+ test scenarios and test cases have been documented.
RSAT-based automated regression test scenarios that would save up to 80% of manual testing time.
Benchmarked system performance with 100,000 transactions per hour at peak with 150+ concurrent users on a tier 4 environment.
Data migration for the first existing customer. Automation was implemented, which reduced technical migration time from four weeks to one week.

Benefits

Successful cloud solution upgrade in record time, with high quality, and within budget.
Ready to go to market for new customer onboarding Flexible cloud-based environment at a low cost.
Future preparedness for the next stage of digital transformation.
Ever Green ERP is distinguished by its robust build, deployment, and automation processes.

Alexander Zaal Director Wonen, Aareon NL

Aareon’s vision is to be most innovative solution provider in Property industry, by enabling Digital Transformation. Aareon NL envisaged to modernise its flagship product, Tobias, an on-premise ERP solution for the property market. Sonata, with their deep expertise in Dynamics 365 platform, collaborated with Aareon team and leveraged strong Microsoft connections every step of the journey, in delivering the next generation Tobias 365 platform. Sonata has been our trusted and committed partner in the journey of achieving our digital vision, from upgrading the solution to Cloud, arriving at a common template, leveraging the strength of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, and migrating one of Aareon’s largest and first customer to Tobias 365 platform.

Rudy Hoving Project Manager Dynamics 365, Aareon NL

A big Thank You to all people at Sonata. Some of us have spent months (some years) trying to achieve certain goals. One of those goals was to bring our 1st pilot-customer live with Tobias 365. Last week we succeeded in this together with Sonata. That is why I am taking this moment to let you know how much the people of Aareon appreciate how you have supported us towards this goal, and you have also worked very hard to get it done. We are very proud and happy to announce that Habion has been live with Tobias 365 and that we at Aareon can use this as a springboard to transfer our other customers in the coming years. Thank you very much for the cooperation, and your hard work. We could not have done this without you. Greatly appreciate your commitment to it. Let’s celebrate this milestone.

About the Company

The client is Denmark's largest cooperative farm supply company, owned by 12,000 Danish farmers. They sell feedstuff mixes, ingredients and vitamin mixes, fertilizer, crop protection, seed, and energy, as well as crops purchased from farmers. The client also sells well-known brands of farm equipment and runs a large network of hobby and leisure stores.

Problem Statement

The client was looking for a partner to help them implement their digital vision, which maximizes value growth for individual farmers. They required visibility and certainty into complex contracts that specified weight and other product quality parameters such as moisture and protein content, as well as the ability to quickly and accurately calculate quality adjustments and charges. Due to acquisitions, business units had different systems, which made it hard to see how things were running as a whole.

Solution

We assisted the client in implementing Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, as well as Talent (Attract), and Sonata's CTRM, an ERP-integrated CTRM solution. The solution was implemented in multi-national operations to meet various fiscal and currency requirements while ensuring standardization across business units.

It provided visibility to all contracts, orders, and settlement details on a single platform, as well as powerful tools for automatically adjusting contract pricing in response to changes in any or all quality parameters as crops, were harvested and test results became available. The client was able to provide a sustainable program to train their employees for them to upload master data and implement Attract (recruitment module).

Benefits

With a single source of data, it provides a 360-degree view of the business
Because of the shared database, the group's fiscal reporting is simplified
Increased sourcing and trading function operational efficiency because CTRM is integrated into ERP functions
Better cost control as a result of visibility into contracts, pricing, positions, forex, and inventory
Increased assistance to farmers and growers to ensure higher quality products through the use of digital capabilities such as IoT and Azure ML

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Case Study

Traveling to the Future

Springboard to Cushy Sales