Case Study
Case Study
About the Company
The client is a Danish-based farmers' co-operative owned by 12,000+ member farmers rolled out Dynamics 365 & Sonata’s CTRM across multinational operations, satisfying different fiscal and currency requirements while ensuring systems are standardized, efficient and geared towards maximizing profits.
The client is a cooperative farm supply company selling feedstuff mixes, ingredients and vitamin mixes, fertilizer, crop protection,, seed and energy. It also purchases crops from farmers.
Problem Statement
The company’s goal was to streamline solutions to have one platform for day-to-day ERP across its agribusiness divisions, and to modernise and standardise back-office functions such as financial reporting and sales and purchase orders. However, it was the company’s need for a robust commodity trading solution that drove their choice of ERP.
Solution
Sonata Software’s Commodity CTRM is Microsoft certified for the cloud-based Dynamics 365 platform and dovetails seamlessly with the Microsoft Finance Operations ERP. The solution has been rolled out across clients’ multinational operations, satisfying different fiscal and currency requirements while ensuring systems are standardized, efficient, and geared towards maximizing profits.
Sonata Software’s Commodity CTRM puts contracts at the center of operations. It provides powerful tools for automatically adjusting contract pricing, and responding to changes in any or all quality parameters as crops are harvested and test results become available. Once adjustments are recorded in the contract they are automatically reflected in inventory (warehousing) and invoices (financials).
Benefits
Sonata implemented a retail commerce solution to manage sales of food for livestock and pets, work clothes, fertilizer, tools, and equipment (farm and domestic) across 21 stores (29 registers).
Sonata Software took the client further along their digital journey, implementing a retail commerce solution to manage sales of food for livestock and pets, work clothes, fertilizer, tools, and equipment (farm and domestic) across 21 stores (29 registers).
About the Client
The client is a leading manufacturer of all kinds of animal feeds and related products in the ANZ Region. They are also into the distribution business of various kinds of superior-grade animal feeds. It supports major food producers in the beef, dairy, poultry, pig, sheep, and aquaculture industries, laboratory animals, and the equine and canine recreational sector. It’s also one of the largest domestic consumers of locally grown cereal grains, putting commodity trading at the epicenter of its operations.
Problem Statement
With plants and warehouses located across Australia and Thailand, the client often tailors products for buyers based on the nutrition needs of their animals. Some of their facilities operate with a limited number of products and can take advantage of manufacturing runs of up to 100 tons. Other plants specialize in shorter runs, stopping to change formulas and creating a new batch with different ingredients more frequently.
The demand to purchase and supply inventory for production locations across Australia and to track and manage manufacturing processes of thousands of unique product formulas called for a solution that could execute contracts, manage risk and fully track financials.
Solution
After extensive research and analysis of available ERP systems, the client determined that Microsoft Dynamics offered a flexible, robust ERP system that could drive considerable long-term savings through a lower total cost of ownership.
To tailor Microsoft Dynamics AX to meet the unique needs of its process-manufacturing operation, the client engaged Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Scalable Data Systems (now Sonata Scalable), a company with deep industry expertise in enterprise resource solutions. Scalable implemented Microsoft Dynamics to manage and track the costs of batch-manufacturing processes, and its Commodity Procurement solution to manage the purchase of bulk products on the commodities market.
Benefits
- Information now flows automatically—from purchasing agricultural commodities in global marketplaces to providing batches of customized products in multiple locations.
- In addition, the company has achieved a much lower cost of operation.
- The client can manage complex commodity purchasing operations according to the company’s established business processes, managing, and hedging commodity contracts with its vendors while maintaining visibility of contracts and inventories across the entire organization at all times.
- Production has the flexibility to include its unique way of linking batching systems to inventories.
About the Client
The client is a ferry operating firm situated in the United Kingdom that is a subsidiary of a significant Middle Eastern water transport company with a presence in Central Europe. The client owns and manages a number of subsidiary ferry companies in various parts of the world.
Problem Statement
The client wanted to move their B2C ecommerce platform to the cloud while also integrating their web and mobile applications with historical on-premises applications. Sonata Software collaborated with the multinational corporation to provide digital assurance services as part of our Azure package.
The client desired to restructure their sales process and operations in order to provide a better customer experience and higher levels of customer engagement. The old booking application system was on-premises and was not very quick or flexible in adapting to the dynamic market requirements. The old application was difficult to maintain and could not communicate with third-party applications.
Solution
Sonata proposed delivering a multi-cloud solution on Azure and building a SAP Hybris while providing assurance for functional testing-UI and API (through Postman), enabling test automation, and utilising Rest Assured for API test automation.
Our team performed the testing, which included functional testing, mobile web responsiveness testing, and cross-browser testing. API testing was carried out for the integration of front-end and back-end layers in multiple cloud environments. It also included third-party integration API testing, performance testing, and application security testing.
For regression and cross-browser testing, UI-based Functional Test Automation with Selenium was performed, as well as Performance Testing with JMeter and Azure Application Insights. Burp Suite Pro was used for application security testing, and the team verified that automated tests were run every day and that the test environment was deployed.
Benefits
Without having to wait for end-to-end testing, the API test automation helped give immediate assurance of its quality and discover errors early. End-to-end flow test automation aided in running all tests on daily builds as part of regression testing. Following build and deployment to the test environment, functional and API tests were automated and conducted on a daily basis.
About the Client
The client is a multinational technology firm based in the United States that manufactures computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. The client is one of the "Big Five" firms in the information technology industry in the United States. Since 2014, the company's focus has been on cloud computing, which has helped the company's stock achieve its highest value since December 1999.
Problem Statement
The client was looking for a partner to test the implementation of a complicated cloud-native corporate software. It necessitated the establishment of a test factory in order to deliver test as a service to their numerous customers. Functional tests, API tests, system integration tests, compatibility tests, and product upgrade testing were all part of the test service.
The client's corporate product line was well-known to Sonata Software, which aided in providing confidence on product deployment.
Solution
More than 50,000 scenarios with complicated functionality had to be tested. Finance, SCM, Project operations, Trade & Logistics, Warehouse Management, HRM, Sales & Marketing, and other elements were tested, and we also tested for multiple partners.
Sonata delivered Test as a Service (TAS) to a number of the client's clients. Functional tests, test automation, API tests, system integration tests, compatibility tests, and product upgrade testing are among the services provided. To meet the client's needs, we leveraged Azure services such as DevOps, Logic Apps, Data, Power Automate, and others.
Benefits
With 90 percent test coverage, 95 percent of these tests were automated and executed daily as part of the CI/CD pipeline. It aided in the stabilisation of tests, resulting in a 99 percent pass rate.
About the Client
Our client, a mobile technology leader, specializes in providing transformational technologies to the wireless and video space. They also have expertise in mobile technology research and development.
Problem statement
The organisation had implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as a number of other enterprise applications in the data ecosystem. Furthermore, it was a complex web due to nearly 50 data entities, 54 legal entities, and a transactional volume of up to 32 million records. The incremental growth strategy had become a bottleneck.
Because the underlying platform was limited in its ability to support additional application integrations, data extraction and consolidation from various surround applications was a tedious and time-consuming process. As a result, the customer struggled to obtain data in time for analysis. There was a need to revisit the data processing model and construct a stronger data foundation capable of supporting digital landscape expansion. Sonata helped the client to build a platform to resolve current challenges and meet future business needs in various areas, apart from addressing processing limitations.
Solution
Sonata helped envision an Intelligent Data Platform that would help consolidate the data from varied sources and built intelligent workflows to help orchestrate the data within the ecosystem. The solution design focused on
- Building a data infrastructure for speedy data processing, agile reporting, and insights delivery
- Ensuring speedy data processing for integration use cases
- Developing a scalable report processing model and report business performance
- Unearthing patterns and critical insights
The platform developed by Sonata, leveraged Microsoft Azure Stack capabilities including Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake, Azure SQL DB, and Power BI that significantly contributed to a rise in the overall azure consumption. The platform also enabled the customer with real-time data analytics capabilities.
Benefits
- A flexible and scalable data asset platform was developed by incorporating data strategy principles.
- The platform model helped create a detailed implementation roadmap and build the architecture for the enterprise data platform.
- Dispense incremental business value prioritized feature delivery.
- Apply best practices and best-fit tools in evolving business fit data architecture using 18 Point Data Characteristics framework.
- The intelligent data platform developed was equipped with predictive analytical capabilities.
About the Client
Enhancing risk management efficiency with the help of a modern data platform
Our client is an American global energy company in manufacturing, retailing and power generation. The client is one of the largest companies in the world and the second-largest company in the United States. It ranked 27th in 2021 on the Fortune 500 list and 61st in Forbes Global 2000 in 2020.
Problem Statement
The client's HES (Health & Safety Environment) department faced issues with the safeguards. The existing system was not effective in preventing accidents and had large scale implications. There was a need for a system that would create a link between safeguards and incidents. The system would also provide insights into the effectiveness and any likelihood of occurrence of any risks. These insights would help to boost confidence and allow for a more targeted approach to mitigating risks.
Solution
Sonata created a "safeguard system" based on a mesh architecture that consumed data from individual source systems. This system had a single interface that enabled the users to create a link between safeguards and incidents, equipment, and assurance activities. With the safeguard at the heart of the system, the system would link the risk assessment to incidents, equipment, and assurance activities. The unified data platform enabled automated data collection, cleaning, transformation, and storage in a central data warehouse for future use by business groups and systems.
The platform developed made extensive use of Microsoft Azure Stack capabilities such as Azure Data Lake, Azure BLOB Storage, Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Bricks, and Azure Cognitive Search, which increased Azure consumption.
Benefits
- The unified modern data platform enabled the orchestration of critical operational data improving operational and business efficiency.
- Improved responsiveness to environmental impact challenges.
- Timely detection of anomalies in the footprint and operational impact.
- Effective responses enabled users to associate and differentiate a safeguard with one or more events, equipment, and assurance activities.
- Efficient safeguard management improved equipment traceability and searchability.
- Improved risk profile mapping using AI insights and algorithms.
About the Client
The client is a leading claims processing company across the world with experience of over 80 years. With innovative tools to empower people across industries, the client is the largest listed independent claims management provider. They started by making milk truck deliveries more efficient at the beginning, which is now known for solving claims handling challenges for thousands of businesses across the world. The client has nearly 9,000 employees and is spread across 70 countries in the world.
Problem Statement
There was a need to revamp the client's Global Claim Intake system while creating a white-label self-service to enable users to register themselves and engage with its clients, providing an exceptional customer experience.
The requirement for the Claim Intake System came from the Property & Casualty division of the client and they gradually expanded it to other lines of business on a global level. The client wanted us to help them to create a one-stop solution with an engaging user experience and seamless integration with their internal systems, along with supporting the external client APIs.
Solution
Sonata Software partnered with the global company to provide Digital Assurance services as a part of our Azure suite. Our team undertook the testing of the client's cloud-native application, which involved various stages: functional testing, performance testing, and application security testing.
The client wanted us to focus on providing their customers with an exceptional experience on par with the current industry standards, which should ideally attract more usage of the new system and enable higher web traction. The customer site will be client-branded and provide the ability for configuration and customization with respect to look, feel, data model, content, and profile settings. There was a need for a dynamic site with minimal enhancements to seamlessly onboard new clients with new data models and API integrations. Consolidation of multiple systems and processes, which are in use today, into a single application used by clients, customers, and the company's personnel.
Benefits
Sonata proposed building a cloud-native solution on Azure, assuring functional testing for the UI, API (using Postman), and 3rd party system integrations. The testing process was carried out in multiple stages, including test automation (UI-based Functional Test Automation using Selenium), performance testing with JMeter and Azure Application Insights, and application security testing using Burp Suite Pro. Automated tests were integrated with the Azure DevOps pipeline to enable continuous testing and save effort. The focus was on providing smart solutions to the client. The smoke and regression testing were automated and we integrated them with the DevOps pipeline, which resulted in a 50% saving on the testing effort.
Our client is a growing and innovative company that offers professional services to companies engaged in metallurgy and exploration. It has 50 offices worldwide in 30 countries and specialises in process improvement.
Problem Statement
The company's production was deteriorating as a result of unstable systems and severe technical issues. It was vital that the organisation solve this issue and establish a platform that would identify problems and provide a roadmap for improving its services.
A Digital Road Map was created to fulfil the client's present demands while also incorporating future requirements. In addition to highlighting strategic concerns that needed to be addressed, the Digital Road Map would aid in the resolution of operational and strategic issues.
A Personalized Solution
The Sonata team created a digital roadmap for a multinational mining corporation to satisfy both the organization's immediate and future demands. It handled ongoing business needs by updating to D365 across many countries. To determine these needs, data from supply chain, operations, finance, transportation, and warehousing was analysed.
As part of our performance management approach, we created a system to track staff productivity. Sonata is a preferred partner to assist our clients in digital transformation and to deliver a comprehensive strategy to make your organisation future-ready. Sonata supported global and functional rollouts around the clock.
Sonata designed and implemented a connector between Dynamics 365 Supplier Relationship Management and a number of other logistics systems. We are currently engaged in a digital transformation engagement with the client, where we are utilising the platform thinking paradigm and enabling IoT and mobility functions.
Benefits
We identified major functional and operational challenges and installed custom solutions to smooth their operations globally, resulting in rapid growth. We were able to provide seamless modernization across existing systems because of Sonata's experience, and these additions helped the business process by eliminating difficulties at the financial and operational levels. It minimised manual labour and made the system future-proof.
The client is among the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firms in the UK with a turnover of over $23.8 billion. The company has close to a lakh employees and caters to real estate investment firms and tenants through more than 450 offices worldwide.
Problem Statement
The company had deployed Dynamics AX 2012, but it did not go smoothly, and many problems arose. In terms of rolling out and supporting their instance, the customer encountered challenges with their partner. Sonata changed their old management system using its expertise in industry-specific IP implementation. The components were: Finance, Project Operations, Sales Quotations, Vendor and Customer Master.
Sonata was chosen as the ideal partner for the client's Microsoft Dynamics Program because of its track record of solving challenging corporate difficulties. Sonata contributed expertise in Dynamics implementation, support, digital assurance, performance analysis and resolution, PowerApps, and modernization capabilities.
A Personalized Solution
Sonata performed a performance audit on the client's system to identify the main issues with the application. Following the audit, we presented a thorough strategy that addressed their issues. As a result, the whole user experience was improved, and workers were inspired to adjust to the changes. By reducing manual processes, the customer gained greater visibility into procurement and inventory management.
The client needed a solution that would enable the company to efficiently manage its operations and gain better control over business forecasts. To achieve this, they implemented a system that improved real-time reporting of business forecasts and increased transparency across the organisation and its partners. This allowed the client to improve internal controls and secure access.
Sonata deployed a powerful platform-based solution with specific purchase order and timesheet apps for teams across the globe. The system had real-time visibility for orders and the same could be approved on PowerApps.
The Power of PowerApps
Sonata has built and deployed intuitive mobile apps in a short time. The solution has improved the operational efficiency and ergonomics of client teams, who can now access and update data on the go.
The client is a Japanese firm that makes photomasks, photomask blanks, and hard disc drive platters, as well as contact lenses and eyeglass lenses for the healthcare sector, medical photonics, lasers, photographic filters, and software. It is a Forbes Global 2000 Leading Company and a member of the Industry Week 1000. The group consists of 146 consolidated subsidiaries and 10 affiliates globally, with its parent company being a leading manufacturer of optical products.
Problem Statement
Headquartered in Tokyo, the client has 36,000 workers who work to create innovative medical goods and services in more than 30 countries. Despite the fact that the corporation used Dynamics AX 2012 across the board, there was no global standard process; each country established its own protocols as it saw fit.
As a result, reports were inconsistent, visibility between offices was limited, and activities were frequently overcomplicated. The client saw the need to streamline and standardise its operations across all of its locations across the world.
With all of these needs in mind, Sonata suggested using Dynamics 365. However, the migration necessitated a mental adjustment, as abandoning on-premise infrastructure meant relinquishing some autonomy in exchange for the scalability and agility that moving to the cloud provided.
A Personalized Solution
The client created a worldwide Dynamics 365 template with the support of Sonata and began its transformation journey by spreading it out to Australia, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asia Pacific regions. The template was upgraded, and we built a global template that may be used in a variety of countries.
Flexible deployment methodologies and cloud enablement were introduced and optimised processes across all of its locations worldwide to meet dynamic infrastructure demands. The Upgrade tool from Sonata was used to automate code impact evaluations and upgrades. The best of the Bizapps stack (Power Platform) was used, while Sonata's pre-built solution (IP) components were used for specific requirements (e.g., Pricing Configurator for Australia). A dual-shore service delivery strategy was deployed to enhance business, coverage, and cost efficiency.
The key to success
Roll-out and upgrade times were reduced because to Sonata's simpler upgrading technique and automated code evaluation and migration. We created a system that is future-ready, with new digital capabilities and the capacity to grow your organisation. Flexible operations are made possible by configurable prices, an easy-to-use user interface, and intelligent analytics. Cloud hosting and round-the-clock technical support result in lower infrastructure expenses and improved uptime. Financial data reconciliation and reporting were automated, resulting in lower operational expenses, while freight charges and inter-company order processing were also automated. It led to improved financial control and tracking, as well as increased visibility throughout the global organisation.