The challenge
Global Handling ran on six disconnected systems — Tally for accounts, Excel for MRP, a homegrown PHP app for inventory, separate tools for HR, QC, and shipping. The team had no live view of stock, lead times were slipping, and month-end close took 11 working days. Every additional plant compounded the chaos.
Two prior ERP attempts — one with a regional Odoo partner, one with a SAP B1 reseller — had been scrapped after timelines slipped beyond a year. Leadership had lost faith in ERP vendors.
The constraints we accepted
- Zero production downtime — even during cutover weekend
- Live in under 90 days, fixed scope and fixed price
- Full data migration from Tally, Excel and the PHP app — no data loss
- Operational continuity for 240 users with English + Arabic interface
- Auditable change log to satisfy a planned ISO 27001 audit in Q3
Our approach
We led a 1-week diagnostic, mapped 47 processes across plants, and committed to a fixed timeline with weekly demos. The implementation went live in 9 weeks across MRP, Inventory, Quality, Purchase, Sales, Invoicing, HR, and Accounting on Odoo 19 — hosted on Odoo.sh with a custom multi-warehouse routing layer.
What we built
- Custom MRP routings reflecting the three plants' real production flows
- Quality control checkpoints tied to production work orders with hardware barcode scanners
- A custom Odoo module to import 6 years of Tally journals into Odoo's accounting engine, fully reconciled
- Bilingual UI (English/Arabic) using Odoo's translation framework
- Real-time dashboards for plant managers — WIP, OEE, scrap rate, on-time delivery
- ISO 27001-aligned change management — every config change tracked in a versioned Git repo
Cutover weekend
We executed cutover over a single weekend with a 3-hour validation window. Production resumed Monday morning with zero rollbacks. The rehearsed rollback plan was never invoked.
Outcomes
Within 30 days of go-live, Global Handling closed its first month inside Odoo in 4.2 working days — down from 11. Stock accuracy moved from a manual ~62% to a system-reconciled 99.7%. The CFO eliminated two annualized headcount reqs that had been on the FY26 plan.
- Live cross-plant visibility on production status for executives
- Annual savings of ~$240k from inventory write-off reductions alone
- Procurement cycle compressed from 9 days to 4 days average
- Foundation laid for AI-driven demand forecasting (phase 2, now in flight)
“iVentureTeam took our Odoo implementation from a stalled six-month project to live in eight weeks. They genuinely understand operations, not just code.”
Rohit Menon · COO, Global Handling