Our reference
The Ziegler Story: An Internal E-commerce to Automate Agency Procurement
Ziegler is a major player in the transport and logistics sector. With numerous agencies across Belgium and France, the group (including Ziegler Belgium, France, and the IT entity Dornach) required a powerful tool to centralize its resources. Here, the challenge for Odoo was not focused on end-customers, but rather on providing a strategic internal tool for managing its own agency network.
The Challenges: Modernizing Agency Management
Prior to Idealis’s intervention, the group faced fragmented processes:
Software Obsolescence: An aging system reaching its end-of-life, hindering operational agility.
Manual Processes: Orders were often placed via phone or email, leading to administrative burdens and data silos.
Need for Autonomy: The desire for agencies to order their supplies, IT equipment, and safety gear (PPE) independently via a digital catalog.
Invoicing Complexity: The goal of simplifying internal re-invoicing between the procurement center and the local agencies.
La solution Idealis : une architecture Odoo innovante pour plusieurs entreprises
A multi-company Odoo architecture with three separate websites has been deployed to meet the specific needs of each entity:
- Three E-commerce Websites for Targeted Management
- One site for Ziegler Belgium.
- One site for Ziegler France.
- One site for Dornach, dedicated exclusively to IT equipment orders for all entities. This setup ensures data integrity while maintaining a unified management database.
- Approval Workflow: Development of two specific workflows, one for agencies via the portal and the other for internal purchases.
- Logistics & Procurement:
- Using the Sales (E-commerce) module for agencies to place orders.
- Use of the Purchasing module and a dropshipping-style feature (slightly customized) to enable the purchasing department to forward orders to external suppliers.
- Management of a minimal inventory (primarily for consumables or safety clothing), with the rest managed on a just-in-time basis.
- Repurposing the Helpdesk Module for Agility : the Helpdesk module is used to centralize "special requests." If a product is not in the standard catalog, the agency opens a ticket. This ensures total traceability and prevents requests from getting lost in overflowing inboxes.
The Benefits: Performance and Global Visibility
Thanks to this unified digital foundation, Ziegler’s procurement department now enjoys real-time visibility into the group’s needs. Agencies have gained autonomy, and the automation of the order-to-purchase flow has generated massive productivity gains. By choosing Idealis, Ziegler transformed an administrative constraint into a logistics performance driver.
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