Challenge
Cardoen sells new and second-hand cars, always offering the lowest prices. IT manager Philippe Deraeve said their digital growth ambitions have grown significantly, yet their digital legacy is outdated. At the start of the collaboration, the Cardoen IT landscape was an organically grown combination of applications and interfaces, which served the current operations and purposes but held major challenges to the future. A central (custom-built) ERP system was reaching its limits from both a technical and effort point of view and needs to be revisited. Thus, extra hands and brains have been brought in to assist with this process
“Our ERP system is already 25 years old. It’s packed with business logic over the years but hasn’t evolved technologically enough. All knowledge is also in the heads of the people who developed it, very little has been documented over the years.” said Deraeve.
Various ongoing strategic projects within Cardoen aimed to support its growth ambitions and meet the digital challenges. These projects were not only about introducing a new IT Architecture and tools, the main driver was to introduce a new way of workings: process, task and data-driven. Improvements in several internal processes were fundamental and this needed to be supported by shifting to a new future-proof technical architecture and introducing new software tools. The current IT landscape and tools had their limitations from both a technical and business (process) point of view.
Solution
After an RFP process, Cactus was selected as the chosen partner for this project thanks to their knowledge of different technical architectures, the quality of their technical solution, the economic proposal offered and the experience demonstrated with other cases in software development outsourcing services. A total of 6 Cactus members, with different roles, have taken part in the still ongoing Cardoen project, from Developers, Business Analysts, Product Managers, and Software Architects, working with different technologies, from Visual Basic Applications to Amazon Web Services.
The fact that part of the team that would work for Cardoen is located in Spain was no problem when deciding on this option. The Cactus members take part in daily meetings and events and are another part of the team.
Results
The speed, flexibility and quality of work of Cactus have been two of the most valued aspects during this collaboration as well as the adaptability to change. During the definition of the proof of concept Aramis, the mother company of Cardoen, changed the direction of the project approach. Cactus proved its flexibility and onboarded some new profiles to ensure the execution of the new project deliverables. The conclusion is that Cardoen was not a pro-nearshoring company, they had certain reservations about working with this form. However, now they feel very comfortable with it and believe they can add the necessary and highly specialized and up-to-date talent to their team whenever needed. In conclusion, Cactus has revealed itself as a reliable software development outsourcing provider.
“ Projects are constantly evolving, that’s just part of the IT world,” responds Diana Schweiger, Chief Operations Officer at Cactus. “That is precisely what we respond to with Cactus: the right profile at the right time. Speed is more important than ever before. We can switch quickly. We have completed our project work and we have just picked up the thread again.”
The article first appeared at Bloovi.be on July 10, 2023.
