Canifa – Building an entire ecosystem around Odoo

Early days

A decade after the political process known as Doi Moi (renovation) in 1986, Vietnam’s economy boomed, and the country's demand for fashion accelerated with it. One company that rode the wave was Canifa; initially founded in Hanoi, offering “Fashion for All” Or “Thời trang dành cho Tất cả” as it is written in Vietnamese, quickly grew to become one of Vietnam's leading fashion retailers. 

In the early days, Canifa went through a period of digital transformation, and they decided to implement SAP ERP software to help them cope with the ever-growing complexity of their operations. 

The SAP implementation started in 2015. The system replaced much of their Excel and paper operations and digitized the POS, inventory, manufacturing and accounting functions of the business. 

Despite the long project duration the software never fully met the needs of Canifa. The company, suffered inefficiencies in the way the stock was handled, returns became a severe cost, and the platform offered poor visibility. They found the product was unsuitable for the Vietnamese market and customization requests always took too long or never materialized at all.

The biggest problem for Canifa was SAP's high costs. With a workforce of over 1,000 people, the costs were quickly spiraling out of control. 

Partner with Trobz

Dissatisfied with the limitations of the software and its high costs, Canifa decided to approach French-owned company Trobz after hearing open source technology could be a viable alternative. 

The company, based in HCMC, specializes in Odoo - the world's No 1 Open Source ERP software with over 3 million users. With Odoo, Trobz delivers customized business applications that meet the needs of Vietnamese companies. 

The challenges with Canifa’s IT operations were extensive, and Trobz began with a period of consultancy, deploying a team of Business Analysts and Project Managers to fully understand the businesses requirement and prepare an effective plan of action. 

Over a period of 6 months, a team led by Deputy Managing Director Tu Bui consulted Canifa, and they worked collaboratively to develop a plan that would ensure the project's success.  

The success

The project went live in May 2017 and because Trobz work in Agile, with iterative steps, parts of Canifa started using Odoo within weeks. The feedback from the staff was excellent, with users saying that it was intuitive and had quickly helped them boost productivity. 

With the transformative power of Odoo the business went from strength to strength, and by 2017 Canifa had over 150 stores, manufacturing operations in two locations and were exporting internationally. 

By 2018 the software was handling over 35,000 SKU’s and processing over 30,000 transactions per day. The impact that effective ERP had on sales revenue was astonishing with growth at an all-time high.

Mr. Son, Co-founder of Canifa, revealed: "As CIO I always wanted Canifa to have the very best ERP solution available on the market. We tried the market leader SAP but found it to be inflexible, expensive and not suited to the Vietnamese market. Working with Trobz was like a breath of fresh air, they were very receptive to our needs and built an IT ecosystem that really works."