Transdev
Zero disruption, zero dropped deliveries: a high-stakes warehouse move on Dynamics AX 2012
The Customer
Transdev GmbH, headquartered in Berlin, is Germany’s largest private mobility provider. With around 9,000 employees and annual revenue of approximately €1.55 billion, its rail and bus subsidiaries transport around 200 million passengers each year. Transdev is also Germany’s second-largest ticket distribution provider, delivering tailored mobility solutions designed around customer needs.
The business is part of the global Transdev Group, one of the world’s leading mobility providers, employing more than 100,000 people across 19 countries. The group is jointly owned by the Rethmann Group and Caisse des Dépôts. In Germany, Transdev has evolved over more than a century into a federation of regional rail and bus operators, expanding steadily through acquisitions. While this extensive footprint is a major strength, it also creates a complex and diverse operational landscape that the organisation must effectively manage.
The Challenge
Transdev operates complex transport networks at scale, serving millions of passengers each year while continuing to grow through acquisitions. Each new entity brings its own systems, processes and data, creating a key challenge for both IT and Finance: how to integrate new businesses quickly, securely and with full control, without adding system complexity, manual workarounds or operational costs.
The reality was a fragmented finance landscape. Around 20 entities were still operating on a legacy SAP R/3 system, while others had already migrated to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. Different charts of accounts, heavily customised configurations and parallel spreadsheet structures limited transparency, slowed consolidation and made group-wide decision-making more difficult than it needed to be.
With the legacy platform becoming increasingly costly and difficult to maintain, Transdev needed to bring its finance operations onto a common platform. By standardising processes and data, the group could gain a clear view across all entities and create a scalable foundation to support future growth.
The Solution
Transdev made a strategic decision to replace its legacy ERP landscape rather than continue maintaining it, moving away from parallel systems and individual customisations towards a single, standardised and scalable platform. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance was selected as the group-wide solution, and Hitachi Solutions was chosen to deliver the transformation.
Hitachi Solutions delivered the programme through a structured and controlled approach designed to minimise risk at every stage:
- Data analysis, cleansing and harmonisation to create consistency across all entities.
- Migration of historical financial data and asset structures to the new platform.
- Multiple mock cutover exercises to test and de-risk the migration ahead of go-live.
- Close collaboration with business stakeholders and key users throughout the programme.
- A strong focus on change management and user adoption to embed new ways of working successfully.
By standardising a common chart of accounts and a shared set of processes, Transdev gained a consistent view of its finances across the group, replacing the patchwork of systems and spreadsheets that had previously limited visibility and efficiency.
Why Hitachi Solutions
Transdev chose Hitachi Solutions for its structured and controlled approach to transformation, combining a strong focus on quality, user adoption and long-term sustainability with close collaboration across business stakeholders and a proven methodology for reducing migration risk. This disciplined approach, combined with deep Microsoft Dynamics expertise, gave Transdev the confidence that a complex, multi-entity migration could be delivered seamlessly and built for long-term success.
“We were highly satisfied with the collaboration in every respect. The team’s strong solution-oriented mindset and structured approach were particularly impressive. Challenges throughout the project were resolved pragmatically at all times, supported by consistently transparent and open communication.”
Diana Richter
Senior Project Manager Finance, Transdev
What’s Next?
Dynamics 365 Finance is now being rolled out across additional countries, while bespoke local solutions are being phased out in favour of a common standard. Transdev is also using Business Process Analytics to continuously review, optimise and improve its processes through data-driven insights.
The result is a scalable ERP platform that can grow alongside the business and support its long-term development, providing a solid foundation for integrating new entities as Transdev continues to expan
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