Bel Access · Business system
An intranet to run sales, stock and a street-vendor network
A Java intranet that lets The Laughing Cow’s team manage sales, stock and a community of street vendors, now extended to other markets such as Africa.
01 · Client
Bel Access, food & beverage.
Bel Group is a global French company behind the world-famous “The Laughing Cow” cheese.
When Bel arrived in Vietnam, it chose a different strategy: not only supermarkets, but also street vendors selling bánh mì.
02 · Project
Self-management, stock and dashboards for every vendor.
To manage sales, stock and the street-vendor community, Synova built an intranet covering monitoring, sales and stock. Teams can self-manage, track stock, collect data and follow dashboards in one place.
A large project with 18 months of development, the system is still in use and now helps manage other markets such as Africa.
03 · The challenge
A sales channel that no standard system covered.
When Bel brought The Laughing Cow to Vietnam, it chose to sell through street vendors making bánh mì as well as supermarkets. A network of independent vendors does not fit a classic distributor model: sales happen in the street, stock moves in small quantities and the data has to be collected from the field.
Bel’s local team needed one place to monitor the network, manage sales and stock, and give vendors a way to manage themselves, with reporting that head office in France could read.
04 · How we solved it
A custom Java intranet, modelled on how the network really works.
01
Modelling the vendor network
Two business analysts worked with Bel’s team to describe the vendor community, the stock flows and the monitoring the team needed, before the architecture was fixed.
02
Three modules, one system
Monitoring, sales and stock were built as one Java intranet with self-management for teams, data collection and dashboards.
03
Built for two audiences
The intranet runs in English and French, so the field team in Vietnam and the group in France work on the same data.
04
Eighteen months with a stable team
A project manager, a technical architect, a designer, five web developers and two testers delivered the project over 18 months.
05 · Outcome
Still in use, and now running other markets.
The system remains in daily use and has been extended beyond Vietnam to help Bel manage other markets, such as Africa. A tool built for one country became a group asset.
18
Months of development
12
Team members
2+
Markets managed
Why this matters for your project
What this project means for you.
Custom when standard does not fit
If your channel, process or market is unusual, we build the system around it rather than forcing your business into a package.
Built to outlive the project
A system that is still in production years later is the real measure of quality. We design and test for that.
One build, several markets
Multi-language and multi-market support let a local tool be reused by the group.
Inside the project
Dashboards for sales, stock and vendors.
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