Epicor doubled its investment in Indonesia in the last 6 years, seeing the large market potential with high growth compared to other SEA countries.
Heaptalk, Jakarta — Epicor, a global company that provides enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, expanded its service to Indonesia’s market 6 years ago. According to the Regional Vice President of Epicor, Vincent Tang, the expansion was carried out based on the promising potential of the country’s market.
“Epicor is more active in the Indonesian market and our business is promising. Our business grew many times over the last 6 years,” said Vincent who has been with Epicor for 24 years and spent the first of his 18 years with Epicor focused on North Asia.
Based on the business Epicor has done over the last few years, Indonesia can be classified as a big market compared to other Southeast Asian countries. Vietnam is also growing, but Indonesia still has a bigger market.
“What is the largest manufacturing country in Southeast Asia? Singapore is definitely no, Malaysia also is not. Vietnam is growing but isn’t the biggest market, Thailand is definitely no. Indonesia is the one,” Vincent said while attending Indonesia’s Manufacturing IT Summit in Jakarta (02/15).
Southeast Asia is seen as an attractive manufacturing business opportunity. Although China is known as the largest manufacturing country in the world, the country is facing a lot of challenges, primarily in finding labor. Besides labor costs that continue rising, the number of people who want to work in factories is also low.
Vincent explained, “China is facing a lot of challenges in terms of finding labor because of past policies that allowed couples to have only 1-2 children 20 years ago. Now, there are not many large families. Before this policy, they had 5-10 children and now there is only one child. The parents do not want them to work in a factory.”
For the manufacturing industry players to sustain growth and remain competitive, they need to find a way to reduce costs. Currently, some of the China’s manufacturers are thinking of relocating their factories to Southeast Asia. “Where would be the opportunity for these manufacturing companies to move?”, Vincent asked. “I would say Vietnam is one, Malaysia is another, and definitely Indonesia is a key location,” he said.
Further, Epicor scaled up its investment in Indonesia starting in fiscal year (FY) 2023. “Now we are more or less investing double of what we were over the last 6 years,” he said. “We have now doubled our resources and we expect to see double the returns in our business as well.”
Epicor’s collaboration with diverse stakeholders in Indonesia
With high expectations for the Indonesian market, Epicor is putting every effort into boosting business growth in this country, including collaborating with industry associations, government, and higher education institutions. “We are very focused on collaborating with industry associations, with the media to promote the brand, with the government, and with universities,” Vincent explained.
Further, he said Epicor helps business leaders understand the value of smart manufacturing and how it continuously evolves. “People began talking about industry 4.0 two years ago, whereby smart manufacturing ERP is the key component needed to integrate with other solutions including MES, BI, AI, and IoT. And Epicor has all these Industry 4.0 components ready in our solutions,” added Vincent.
Epicor also established a partnership with a government organization under the Ministry of Industry, the Industry 4.0 Digital Center (PIDI 4.0), which has the goal of accelerating Indonesia’s Industry 4.0 adoption. In addition, the company is also working with several universities in Jakarta and East Java to instill an industry 4.0 technology mindset. For instance, we have just recently kicked off with Brawijaya University in November last year.
“We are actually donating software to a few universities so they can provide it as part of the program for students in industrial engineering,” Vincent disclosed. “When students learn about ERP capabilities, they’ll have a technology mindset when they graduate and go to work for manufacturing companies in Indonesia, helping them be more competitive and more knowledgeable in terms of what is happening in the IT industry.”
All of these efforts are certainly calculated based on potential market growth. According to Vincent, the growth of the manufacturing business in Indonesia will continue to increase for at least the next 10 years. “I’m very positive about the Indonesian market and I still believe it will grow faster than any other Southeast Asian country,” Vincent explained. “We are investing in Indonesia.”
