Serex Consulting beats industry Goliaths to Fritolay-Pepsico
Bogotà, Colombia – November 7, 2007 — Colombian Value Added Reseller Serex Consulting S.A. defeated industry Goliaths to sign Fritolay–PepsiCo for its IBES LSV ERP system that now drives the entire group’s sales operations for Latin America. The system – developed in Genero and just recently deployed – withstood grueling competition from SAP, Oracle Financials and JD Edwards before being selected. Serex superior industry knowledge and better product fit were critical success factors contributing to their victory.
“The move to IBES LSV 5 was driven by many factors, not least by Web Services and the need for a modern GUI,” said Mr. Raul Suarez, Fritolay-PepsiCo IT Manager, Latin America.
“IBES LSV 5 was made possible by Genero.” said Ricardo Namén Escrucería, CEO Serex Consulting S.A. “We achieved in man months what would have taken man years with other development environments. In just four months we implemented many bespoke features that would never have been possible given the deadlines. IBES LSV is being prepared for SOA and Genero enables us to do that within a manageable timeframe and budget. SOA is going to be the customer driven theme for the foreseeable future.”
There were many obstacles to overcome in the early days of Serex relationship with Grupo Margarita, later acquired by Fritolay-PepsiCo.
“Our relationship with the group goes all the way back to 1993 – before Grupo Margarita merged with Fritolay-PepsiCo,” said Ricardo. “That initial transition from a family run business with a homegrown system to a world class ERP forced their corporate culture and business processes to compete with the best.”
Back then, it took seven hard months of extensive functional testing, executive level presentations and meticulous veri-fication of their business case using live data before Serex emerged victorious. Very quickly IBES LSV became the group’s corporate standard and engulfed Savoy, Jack Snacks, Comercializadora S.A.S. and Crunch companies.
It wasn’t always plain sailing however. When Fritolay-PepsiCo acquired Grupo Margarita in 1999 the plan was to migrate them over to Oracle Financials. That was before they consulted staff. In the end common sense ruled the day resulting in IBES LSV floating to the surface and becoming the dominant system for Latin America. The icing on the cake came when Fritolay-PepsiCo was awarded first prize for the best world wide merger – having migrated and integrated multiple corporate systems under IBES LSV without a single loss of data – all under the guidance of Serex Consulting.
Then in 2002, Fritolay-Pepsico imposed Oracle Financials world wide and then SAP appeared after a change of President at PepsiCo. Neither Oracle nor SAP was able to unseat IBES LSV from Latin America sales operations.
Serex also provided Fritolay-PepsiCo Genero training, so that they could develop new applications autonomously.
But that isn’t the end of the road for Serex. After Columbia and Venezuela, a centralized hub in Mexico is being prepared that will service other regions including Peru and Ecuador from that single site.
About Serex Consulting S.A.
SEREX CONSULTING, is a renowned Colombian vendor of IBES LSV – an ERP solution with thousands of users world wide.
