Case Study

Service de Remplacement - Farm Workforce

A Centralized Odoo Platform for Replacement Farm Workers in France

Industry: Agriculture
Company Size: 1,000+ Employees
Users: 250
Go-live: January 2014
Effort: 400 + 200 man-days in 2 phases
Modules: Human Resources, Accounting, Payroll, Website

About the Client

Service de Remplacement (SdR) is a nationwide network of associations in France that provides replacement workers to agricultural businesses when their regular staff are away because of leave, illness or other reasons. Its member associations also help farms manage and train staff and comply with labour regulations, and SdR offers training and advice to employers and employees. The network counts 500 associations, 39,000 member companies and 13,000 temporary workers, and it replaced 600,000 working days in 2011.

The Challenge

Complex Scheduling for Thousands of Replacements

With thousands of workers being replaced every day across the network, SdR has to schedule, track and coordinate a large workforce continuously, while protecting the rights of both temporary workers and the farms they work for.

Outdated Desktop Software and Fragmented Data

An old desktop application, used by some associations and limited to handling replacements, sat alongside other legacy software. Data was fragmented, information was processed slowly, and schedules, contracts, payroll and employee benefits were hard to manage.

No Automation to Support Growth

Without synchronization and automation, the risk of errors was higher and the systems could not scale with the network, affecting service quality and operational stability.

Why Odoo & Trobz

SdR replaced the old desktop application with a centralized web-based solution that brings the back-office features together, including invoicing, accounting, financial reporting and payroll. The system is split into two Odoo instances with some synchronization between them: one for back-office work by administrative staff, and one that acts as a marketplace connecting farmers with temporary workers.

What We Built

A data model customized for replacements
An interactive booking chart to visualize the planning of replacements
A multi-company setup covering several hundred companies
Payroll built to comply with the French labour code
SMS notifications
Single sign-on through LemonLDAP, shared with other applications such as the extranet, e-learning platform and forums
Deployment on a load-balanced, multi-node platform

Results

The platform went live in January 2014.
The project ran in two phases: 400 man-days over 12 months, then 200 man-days over 9 months.
The system has 250 users across the back office and the marketplace.