How a $1B+ Southeast Asian Retailer Manages Facilities Across 300 Stores on Odoo

Running facilities across more than 300 stores and 40 shopping malls means thousands of assets, hundreds of suppliers, and a maintenance issue on someone’s floor every single day. For years, this client tracked all of it on spreadsheets, paper and a basic in-house tool. It worked at first, until it didn’t. 

Our client is a leading multi-format retail operator and a key business unit of one of Southeast Asia’s largest retail groups. To manage facilities at that scale, they partnered with Havi Technology to build a centralised system on Odoo, connected to Power BI. Odoo brings ticketing, maintenance, suppliers and reporting into one place, so multi-site operators can manage facilities at scale from a single system.

Project Overview

INDUSTRY	Retail
BUSINESS PROFILE	A subsidiary of one of the largest retail groups in SEA > $1 billion annual revenue
COMPANY SIZE	10K+ employees
PLATFORM	Odoo + Power BI
LOCATION/REGION	Southeast Asia
IMPLEMENTATION	Odoo Helpdesk, Odoo Maintenance, Odoo Contacts, Power BI Integration
COMPLEXITY	300+ stores, 40+ shopping malls, 1,300,000+ sqm of retail space, thousands of equipment assets, hundreds of suppliers

About the Client: A Leading Multi-Format Retail Operator in Its Market

Our client is a leading multi-format retail operator and a key business unit of one of Southeast Asia’s largest retail groups. The business runs more than 300 stores and 40 shopping malls, together covering well over a million square metres of retail space. It is the kind of operation where, on any given day, hundreds of thousands of people walk through the doors, and every one of those buildings has to be safe, comfortable and open for trade.

That scale means an enormous amount of equipment behind the scenes. Each mall and store depends on a long list of building systems: air conditioners keeping vast indoor spaces cool, escalators and lifts moving shoppers between floors, fire protection systems on standby, POS machines at every checkout, standby generators, lighting, wastewater plant, plus the everyday items down to computers, tables and chairs. Across the portfolio, that adds up to thousands of individual assets and hundreds of suppliers who install, service and repair them.

Keeping all of this running is core to trading. When an escalator stops, or an air conditioning system fails in a busy mall, it affects customers straight away. As the group grew, facilities management became one of its most important and most complex day-to-day challenges.

The Challenges - Facilities Management That Outgrew Its Tools

For a long time, facilities management ran on a patchwork of Excel spreadsheets, paper records and a basic in-house tool. It worked at first, but as the portfolio grew, the cracks widened. Nothing talked to anything else, so there was no single view of what was broken, what was being worked on, what it was costing or how suppliers were performing. Every month, pulling reports together was a slow, manual job, and by the time the numbers were ready, they were already out of date.

Spreadsheets, paper and a basic tool that were never designed to run facilities at this scale

Key challenges included:

• Fragmented tracking of maintenance requests across dozens of malls and hundreds of stores
• No unified view of equipment health, maintenance spend or supplier performance
• Manual approval steps for repair quotations slowing work down
• Difficulty enforcing service levels across categories with very different urgency
• Supplier contracts with no reliable way to see what was expiring, and when
• Reporting was manual, slow and out of date almost as soon as it was pulled together

Their goals:

To move facilities management onto one system that manages every asset, from air conditioners and POS machines to escalators and fire protection, across every mall, tracks periodic maintenance contracts, gives mall employees a simple way to raise and follow corrective requests, and gives leadership reliable reporting they can actually act on.

The Solution - A Centralised Facilities Management System on Odoo

Havi Technology stepped in as their Odoo partner to design and build a centralised Facilities Management System (FMS) on Odoo, tailored to the scale of running facilities across hundreds of locations. The system was designed around how the client’s people actually work, from mall managers on the ground, to regional managers overseeing multiple sites, to head office looking after budgets, contracts and suppliers.

Ticketing, maintenance, equipment, suppliers and reporting now sit inside one connected system, so a request raised at a single mall flows through to completion and payment without falling through the cracks.

A centralised facilities management system on Odoo

Odoo Helpdesk - Structured Ticket Workflow from Portal to Approval

Odoo Helpdesk gives mall teams one place to raise a maintenance ticket and follow it through every stage, from the moment a mall employee reports a broken air conditioner or a faulty escalator, to the final sign-off. Requests are categorised by system type, routed to the right team, and moved through a clear approval path so nothing sits in someone’s inbox.

• A simple portal for mall and regional managers to raise and track corrective requests
• A structured workflow from submission through review, approval and completion
• Category and priority-based routing to the right team
• Approval steps that keep spending controlled without stalling routine work
• A full audit trail on every ticket

Odoo Maintenance - Equipment, Contracts and Preventive Scheduling

Odoo Maintenance keeps every asset, contract and scheduled service in one register, so both corrective work coming in from the helpdesk and preventive work due on the calendar are handled from the same place. Preventive maintenance requests are generated automatically when a scheduled service falls due, and each job is tracked all the way from quotation to closeout, whether it is done by an internal team or an outsourced vendor.

• One central register for every piece of equipment across malls and stores
• Preventive requests auto-created when scheduled maintenance is due
• Contract management with auto-generated contract numbers and expiry alerts
• Cost tracking from quotation through to payment on every job
• Repair expenses recorded and shared with the finance team

Supplier Management and Performance Ratings

Every supplier working on the portfolio has one record in Odoo that carries their full job history and performance rating, turning reputation into evidence. As requests are completed, ratings build over time, so decisions about renewals or new work are backed by a real track record rather than memory.

• One record per supplier with full job history
• A running performance rating built from every completed job
• Automatic alerts when a supplier's rating drops below acceptable levels
• Clear visibility to support renewal and procurement decisions

Automated Notifications and SLA Management

Automated notifications and SLA policies inside Odoo keep the right people informed and hold every ticket to the right standard, without anyone having to chase. Followers get real-time status updates as tickets move through the workflow, and service level rules can be set by category and priority so a critical safety issue is treated with different urgency than a minor cosmetic fix.

• Real-time notifications and status updates as tickets move through each stage
• Service level rules set by category, team and priority
• Automated reminders that escalate based on urgency and keep contract renewals in front of the right people
• Colour-coded ticket views for at-a-glance prioritisation

Power BI Integration for Facilities Reporting

Connecting Odoo to Power BI gives leadership consolidated reporting across maintenance activity, costs and equipment performance, pulled from Odoo directly, so the numbers are current instead of stitched together at month-end.

• Consolidated reporting across the facilities portfolio
• Live data drawn from Odoo, without manual report-building
• One up-to-date view for regional and head office leadership

The Results

With a centralised FMS on Odoo and reporting through Power BI, facilities management now runs on one platform across the entire portfolio, replacing fragmented tracking with a structured, auditable process from ticket to payment.

• One platform across hundreds of stores and shopping malls, replacing scattered tracking with a single source of truth
• Better visibility of maintenance costs and equipment performance across every mall and category
• Improved tracking of compliance and maintenance schedules across critical building systems
• Streamlined ticket-to-payment process, from portal submission to supplier sign-off
• Objective supplier performance data that supports renewal and procurement decisions
• Consolidated reporting through Power BI, giving leadership one clear view of facilities across the network

For retail groups operating at scale, facilities management is a compounding problem: the more stores and malls you run, the more equipment, suppliers, tickets and contracts there are to keep track of. Consolidating on Odoo, designed around how the business actually runs, turns that complexity into a system that can be measured, managed and improved. 

If your business is navigating similar challenges across facilities, maintenance or multi-site operations, Havi Technology can help design the right solution.

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