Universal Sodexho

This corporation is present in 79 countries, with over 313,000 employees and over 11,5bn euros in revenues.

Brief description of the company

A member of Sodexho Alliance, a corporation present in 79 countries, with over 313,000 employees and over 11,5bn euros in revenues.
Universal Sodexho offers around forty very different types of services - from technical maintenance to recreation, medical care, waste removal and water treatment. Universal Sodexho operates internationally and specializes in providing multi-services in harsh environments and difficult operating conditions.
Its clients include many “blue chip” companies from oil & gas, construction and mining industries whose projects are performed from remote sites around the world.
Universal Sodexho later on became part of Sodexo, one of our clients.

The challenge

Universal Sodexho operated under diverse and decentralized technological platforms neglecting the global nature of the business. These existing applications (various Excel, Access and other ad-hoc solutions) did not allow for consistency across regions nor for a global view of client’s operations throughout geographies. Furthermore, most applications were focused around catering and did not provide adequate support for other areas of business.
Having decided that it was a priority to enhance the technological platform supporting the company, Universal Sodexho decided to launch project “Galaxy”, with the objectives of simplifying the daily operations at all levels, formalizing common business processes, supporting Universal Sodexho’s multiservice strategy and gaining a global view on its operations.
Due to its successful experience with other projects in the Sodexho Alliance and its knowledge of the .NET platform, Universal Sodexho decided to work with Hexacta in developing the new platform.

Solution

The application involved three different technologies, all of them based on the .NET framework: a client/server solution built on top of Winforms, a mobile version for warehouse users, and a web reporting suite for management purposes.
Galaxy was conceived to address the business’ needs, as users can work without having to be connected to the central application and then synchronize at a later time when possible.
It was designed taking into account the best practices in reusable object-oriented software, using the following design patterns: MVC, DTO, Business Delegate, DAO, and Factory.
The first version was released after five months of work, allowing an early adoption of the new technology.
Galaxy allowed the user to work offline and to exchange data when technically possible.
The application is internationalized (i18n), allowing users to work in their native language.
Many sub-products arose from this development and were adopted as “best practices” by Universal Sodexho.