Case Study

Cdiscount - E-Commerce

An Odoo Back End for International E-Commerce Subsidiaries

Industry: E-Commerce
Company Size: 1,300+ Employees
Users: 50+
Go-live: March 2015
Effort: 400 man-days over 12 months
Modules: Sales, Inventory, Purchase, Accounting

About the Client

Cdiscount is a French e-commerce platform founded in December 1998 by brothers Hervé, Christophe and Nicolas Charle. It started out selling second-hand CDs and DVDs and later expanded into electronics, home appliances, fashion, groceries and more; Casino Group became a shareholder in 2000 and held a 99.6% stake by 2011. In 2014, Cdiscount set up subsidiaries in Vietnam, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tunisia and Uruguay. Cdiscount.vn launched on April 18, 2014 with the Big C supermarket chain, starting with around 7,000 products. By November 2014 it listed 100,000 SKUs and handled 300 sales a day, with up to 1,000 orders a day during peak sales periods. In 2016, Cdiscount Vietnam and Big C Vietnam were acquired by Thailand's Central Group.

The Challenge

An Online Store Not Connected to the Warehouse

Cdiscount already had an e-commerce platform and warehouse management software, but the warehouse system was not integrated with the e-commerce platform.

No Dedicated Systems for Purchasing, Sales and Accounting

Key operations such as purchasing, sales and accounting had no dedicated software, so operations across the business were not synchronized.

New Subsidiaries on Three Continents

The 2014 expansion added subsidiaries in Asia, Africa and South America. To run them efficiently, each needed a back end that could manage the full e-commerce process.

Why Odoo & Trobz

Cdiscount selected Odoo as the back-end system for its subsidiaries and used the switch to a new website front end as the moment to move the back end to Odoo as well. The rollout started in Vietnam. Odoo handles procurement and stock and is connected through APIs to both the front end and the SAP system at group level.

What We Built

Phase 1, Vietnam: warehouse and inventory management, purchasing, sales and delivery in Odoo
Phase 1, Vietnam: integration with the Magento front end to process e-commerce orders, and with Big C's Gold software to synchronize seller and supplier data
Phase 2, starting in Africa: logistics and warehouse management, with Odoo integrated with the ESUS front end and with Speed, the warehouse management system provided by Bolloré
Phase 3, Vietnam: front-end integration migrated from Magento to ESUS, plus integrations with Big C's SAP system for accounting, supplier and payment data, a marketplace for third-party sellers and pick-up points
Phase 3, Vietnam: Accounting focused on cost of goods sold, with a management reporting system
Advanced warehouse management with FIFO and FEFO, storage locations modeled down to individual bins, and wave picking

Results

The Odoo back end went live in Vietnam in March 2015, after a 400 man-day project over 12 months.
After Vietnam, the same back end was deployed for Cdiscount's subsidiaries in Tunisia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Uruguay and Cameroon.
More than 50 users worked on the platform, which connected Odoo with the storefront, Bolloré's warehouse system and SAP.