About the client

Luvina’s client is the largest travel agency in Japan and one of the largest travel corporations in the world. They specialize in tourism. There are branches all over the world to help Japanese and non-Japanese guests in both private leisure and corporate/business fields. We worked directly with their subsidiary which is in charge of the development, maintenance, and support of the entire corporate’s IT systems.

Project overview

  • Overview: The client needed a dedicated reliable IT partner who had expertise in both Microsoft Dynamic AX and accounting to help them customize, operate, maintain the ERP system for the corporation’s branches all over the world, and provided support to their end users.
  • Industry: ERP, Information Technology, Business Management, Accounting, Travel, Transportation & Logistics, Hospitality.
  • Country: Japan, Global.
  • Technologies: Dynamics AX 2012 R2: X++, SQL server 2008, SSRS, SSAS.
  • Team size: 10 – 20 dedicated Microsoft Dynamic AX engineers.
  • Collaboration model: Offshore Development Center (ODC).
  • Software development type: Implementation (Custom Development, testing, integration, deployment), operation, maintenance, and support.

Challenge

  • Customization of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 at that time (2017) was a big challenge to Luvina because we had not had any experience with Dynamics AX before, while the client’s projects required IT professionals to have both business (accounting and business management process) and technical knowledge about Microsoft Dynamics AX to customize the system and provide support to end users.
  • The accounting system needs to comply with the regulations of different countries, which requires a lot of accounting study effort and custom work from the development team.
  • Keeping a live 24/7 support service to end-users in different parts of the world is also a big challenge because of different time zones.

Solution

  • Luvina Software proposed to the client the Offshore Development Center outsourcing model. The advantage of the ODC model, in this case, is that it helped our client establish their software development subsidiary with no startup cost and reduce management headaches. 
  • Luvina first chose qualified tech leaders and senior engineers who had already had experience with ERP projects to join the ODC team. This helped minimize the learning curve so that the client could kick off their Dynamics AX ERP projects quickly. More system operators and customer support staffs were added to the team after completion of the custom development phase to start operation, maintenance and support phase. 
  • Before obtaining the project, Luvina sent appropriate specialists to the Vietnam branch of the client to take the training. We then recruited and internally trained additional employees to be qualified for the project.
  • Staff rotation was applied to ensure end users live 24/7 support and SLA commitments.

Achievement

  • The client satisfied with the performance and quality of Luvina’s engineers and the outcomes of the custom development phase. They decided to choose Luvina as the provider of engineers and operator staffs to help them operate, maintain, and support for your Microsoft Dynamics AX system.