Tien Phong Plastic South

The Company: About Tien Phong Plastic South

Tien Phong Plastic South, member of Tien Phong Plastic Group, is one of Vietnam’s leading manufacturers of plastic pipes and fittings. Tien Phong Plastic is one of the leading companies in manufacturing plastic pipes and plastic fittings in Vietnam. Its southern affiliate manufactures products in the Binh Duong province and has a sales office in Ho Chi Minh City. The affiliate employs 350.

The Situation: Boosted Collaboration

Tien Phong Plastic ran on a legacy system that offered sales and accounting. But the two applications were housed in separate modules that didn’t connect. At month’s end, the accounting team had to consolidate its data with the sales team for reports, says Van Kim Thanh, ERP Project Manager at Tien Phong Plastic. 

The legacy system was mainly used for accounting and did not offer functionality to handle manufacturing, so they only used the inventory and warehousing modules in its manufacturing division. In the old system, there were only a few authorized users with access to the system so each employee only focused on their assigned tasks every day. Employees were not aware of the entire accounting or manufacturing workflow processes. With limited understanding of the entire quote to finished product workflow, teamwork was not highly promoted and collaboration was not strong. 

For the management team, the legacy system’s reporting was not real-time or in-time. That’s because the data inputs and processes were dependent on a particular person who had access to the system, which was only located in its offices. There were lots of workarounds to manage the manufacturing due to the ERP limitations of the old system. To get a better picture of the business, the executive team decided they needed a more modern ERP, one that could be accessed from anywhere. 

Before the search for an ERP began, Tien Phong Plastic executives needed to choose a technology vendor that could modernize and standardize the current operation. The partner needed to enhance and improve processes to match those of an ERP. The technology vendor needed to help the company create a communication and action plan so that all employees understood the project and the benefits for each stakeholder, as well understood the changes and collaboration needed to make the project a success. 

Tien Phong Plastic chose Patsoft JSC as its technology partner and Acumatica Cloud ERP as its ERP. Phung Minh Triet headed up the Patsoft team implementing Acumatica for Tien Phong Plastic. 

The Solution: Acumatica Manufacturing Edition

The company ran on a local accounting software that consisted of two disconnected modules, one for sales and another for accounting. Tien Phong Plastic South implemented Acumatica Cloud ERP and gained a single connected system that boosted teamwork and collaboration.

KEY RESULTS

• Gained an integrated, connected system, eliminating monthly reconciliations
• Added all employees to the system, improving productivity
• Improved communication and teamwork, strengthening relationships
• Gained the ability to work from anywhere, improving operations
• Acquired a single, flexible platform configured to the way it does business, fostering continued growth

“The most important reason why we chose Acumatica was that it is flexible,” says Thanh. ​“We also looked at SAP and Oracle, but those systems were not flexible or easy to customize to our needs.” Customization was critical, she said because as the business grows, executives will need to make system changes to achieve certain business initiatives. 

“Also, Acumatica does not require a strong expert in-house to maintain the whole system; we can outsource some tasks to service providers,” Thanh says. This allows her team to focus on ensuring the system meets the company’s requirements, rather than always having to maintain servers and software licenses. 

Tien Phong Plastic also chose Acumatica because it can be accessed from anywhere. ​“We do believe in the trend of ​“going mobile”, hence, we aim to be able to work from anywhere, on any device, simply using the internet to connect to the application from any place,” she says. 

The Results: Acumatica Manufacturing Edition Implementation Benefits

After testing Acumatica for several months after implementation, Tien Phong Plastic is now running Acumatica fully. All company information is housed in one central platform, which eliminated the need
to reconcile data between systems as they did previously. Tien Phong Plastic continues to configure the system with the help of Patsoft JSC’s Triet, who is making sure Acumatica is fine-tuned for the company’s business processes. 

“Everything – manufacturing, sales, and accounting — is processed in one system; that’s why we decided to make the change to Acumatica,” says Thanh. ​“It is helping the management team access the data in real- time.” Gaining access to real-time information helps the team make better decisions faster. 

Improved Communication, Teamwork 

Now that all employees have access to the Acumatica platform and understand the business from quote to invoicing to manufacturing to shipping and receiving, teamwork and collaboration has improved. ​“Although users needed time to get used to and be efficient with the new system, our workforce has been upgraded and is now more professional, more skillful, and efficient,” she says. 

“They now understand the reason for what they’re doing and see the benefit of the new business solution,” Thanh adds. ​“They understand the entire process and everyone is clear on what needs to be done. They see that all processes are related, and why they need to synchronize with each other to get their jobs done. It has improved teamwork.” 

Adding CRM, Mobility 

After fine-tuning Acumatica Cloud ERP, Tien Phong Plastic plans to add more Acumatica modules such as its CRM and other applications that allow some of its processes to be completed remotely. 

“We also plan to integrate barcoding at the SKU level, and are now looking for a third party solution so we can print barcodes on the pipes,” Thanh says. 

Patsoft JSC deserves a lot of credit for Tien Phong Plastic’s successful Acumatica implementation
and support, Thanh says. ​“Patsoft JSC did a great job in consulting and demonstrated great project implementation and management,” she says. ​“We look forward to continuing our growth now that we are live and successful with Acumatica.”