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Asun: 60 years in the supermarket and wholesale retail sector
Founded by a family of Spanish immigrants, Asun Supermercados began its history when the current director, Antonio Ortiz Romacho, was only 8 years old. Currently, the chain is a benchmark in the wholesale and supermarket retail sector in the Rio Grande do Sul region, with 40 stores distributed under the Asun Supermercados and Leve Mais Atacado banners.
The network's authority in the region reflects a business vision focused on continuous evolution, always seeking to anticipate trends and adapt to market movements. For customers, this translates into an excellent shopping and service experience.
Technology plays an important role in this regard, and in our conversation with Antônio Martins, IT Manager and DPO at Asun Supermarkets, he told us a bit about his experience migrating and managing an Oracle cloud environment with Skyone . Come understand this story in more detail!
Migration to the Oracle cloud: opportunities for scalability and information centralization
The decision to migrate to the Oracle cloud was made based on a number of factors related to the network's growth and evolution in the market.
In 2019, Asun acquired Consinco's ERP system; until then, they had been working with a locally developed ERP system. Despite integration between the systems, the integrations suffered from constant errors. These errors impacted processes, causing delays, discrepancies in information across sales channels, and ultimately hindering the company's growth.
The Consinco ERP system brought improvements, as the solution already offered integration with various market players and partners. However, after 3 years, with the Oracle version being discontinued and support discontinued, and the need to upgrade the hardware, migrating to the Oracle cloud became an attractive option for Asun Supermarkets.
Today, IT plays a strategic role; its function goes far beyond infrastructure
The perceived value of an Oracle cloud infrastructure has gone far beyond solving scalability and information centralization problems in systems. Antônio Martins emphasized that there is a movement in the IT sector, bringing business and technology closer together.
“During the pandemic, the IT manager decided to modernize the work modality and responsibilities of the sector, “servers, license management, hardware, RMA, warranties and controls. With all these processes you focus only on infrastructure and have no business vision.” – Antônio Martins: IT Manager and DPO
Today's market demands a different type of professional. With the evolution of digital transformation, an IT manager begins to dedicate themselves to and view the company from a different perspective. They then gain the responsibility of bringing a strategic market vision that also impacts the company's profitability. Their role involves seeking process improvements, innovations, security, communication between departments, and identifying bottlenecks and opportunities.
“Another detail concerns the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) in the Information Technology (IT) sector. This often places the IT manager in the position of also being the Data Protection Officer (DPO). This responsibility requires the manager to actively engage in all departments of the company, mapping processes, identifying personal and sensitive data, understanding information flows, and analyzing existing manual operations. Based on this diagnosis, it is necessary to seek appropriate tools, such as BPM, BPMS, iBPMS, and DPA, to assist in this process. With the implementation of the LGPD, the entire IT governance undergoes a complete review or reconstruction, encompassing aspects such as processes, information flows, strategic alignment, decision-making, structures and controls, risk management, knowledge management, training, and compliance.” – Antônio Martins: IT Manager and DPO
The role of a digital evolution partner like Skyone in the face of market trends
With the contract finalized, Asun's migration to the cloud was very smooth, mainly due to the already existing good infrastructure. The migration began on a Monday after business hours, and the following day Skyone was already functioning as a headquarters for Asun Supermarkets, with employees accessing systems through the Oracle cloud.
With the migration, all infrastructure management is now in the hands of the Skyone team. The Asun Supermarkets IT team is no longer involved with issues such as hardware, scalability, licensing, and backups.
The network's IT department has evolved in line with market needs, shifting its focus to strategic areas by supporting other departments, managing internal knowledge on innovation and technology, cataloging processes, identifying bottlenecks, and providing improvement tools. There is also a renewed focus on risk management and cybersecurity, an issue that cannot be ignored by any company today.
But bringing this innovation to market was a challenge, as initially the investment required to maintain their cloud infrastructure didn't seem attractive. Antônio shared some of the factors considered to balance the cost-benefit ratio of this investment:
"It's time to consider the numerous benefits that information technology can bring when migrating to the cloud. A calculation is necessary; however, I invite managers to conduct a more comprehensive analysis, including the available tax incentives according to the company's tax regime. Cloud adoption brings significant advantages, starting with the positive impact on cash flow. It eliminates expenses related to purchasing servers and storage every five years, as well as the need to renew licenses and deal with end-of-life (EOL), contract extensions, and storage area expansions with storage devices and switches. Furthermore, the management of physical and logical security, without interruptions, becomes more efficient, relieving the team of responsibilities that distract from the core business.".
The move to the cloud is not limited to a simple rental; it involves this whole range of benefits. It has become an indispensable reality for the growing retail and IT sectors. Those who do not adapt to the cloud risk remaining a traditional IT company, unable to add value to the business and with a team overwhelmed with operational and repetitive tasks.
Employees are realizing that processes are evolving, allowing for a more strategic approach instead of focusing on operational and repetitive tasks. The transition to the cloud is the fundamental step to align IT with business objectives and ensure a skilled team for the proper support of operations.”
– Antônio Martins: IT Manager and DPO
The positive impact of the cloud on internal processes
After migrating to the Oracle cloud, Antonio identified significant improvements in his processes. In the tax department, for example, the ICMS (Brazilian sales tax) generation process, which previously took up to 8 hours, now takes a maximum of 2 hours. DDA (Direct Debit Authorization) procedures, which used to take up to 40 minutes, now take between 10 and 12 minutes to complete.
"Today I'm with you on Exadata. Adopting Exadata offers several benefits. First, it provides on-demand scalability, allowing us to adjust resources as needed. Furthermore, it offers high availability and exceptional performance for critical workloads, not to mention enhanced security with advanced data protection and compliance features. Automation simplifies operations, while cloud flexibility facilitates integration with other solutions and services.".
– Antônio Martins: IT Manager and DPO
Furthermore, the Oracle cloud has made it much easier to keep systems up-to-date, providing greater protection against vulnerabilities that an expired license can pose to the company. This infrastructure also meets the requirements of verification and certification bodies, such as ISO 27001, a certification that guarantees a standard for information security management systems.
Other benefits mentioned included centralized management, reduced machine usage, ease of use of the Skyone platform plugin, and decreased demand for technical support. Asun's IT team is now lean, with 12 people able to support all stores. This is only possible because the migration brought greater alignment and process improvement.
The pioneering role of SSO on the Skone platform and the benefits of this add-on
We recently announced the launch of the new add-on for the Skyone platform, SSO – a new way to authenticate users on the platform that ensures secure access for employees through the use of credentials already existing in your company.
Always striving for improvement, Asun is already negotiating an SSO license for 300 users. When we asked Antônio what sparked his interest in this new feature, he explained that centralized authentication is a good practice in terms of security.
“If I don’t have this, I need to manage each employee’s username and password on every platform. If something happens to an employee or they leave the company, I need to be very careful not to forget to revoke their access on all systems, but this manual process leaves room for error and puts company data at risk.”
– Antônio Martins: IT Manager and DPO
SSO enables single, centralized management, which resides within the customer's Identity Provider. It also allows for the creation of password rules and patterns, ensuring greater access security. In this case, Asun Supermarkets already uses this feature in other systems, and now there is the possibility of bringing this access centralization to the platform.
The history of Asun Supermarkets with Skyone has ensured many changes and improvements to processes, but digital evolution doesn't stop. Asun's goal today is to continue investing in technology and technological evolution to meet the growing demands of omnichannel retail and improve the customer experience. For us at Skyone, it is a pleasure to share in this evolution.
