HITACHI SUNWAY INFORMATION SYSTEMS has been recognized by APAC CIOOutlook Magazine as the recipient of “Most Promising Manufacturing Technology Solution Companies,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the APAC CIOOutlook research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with CHEAH KOK HOONG.

HITACHI SUNWAY INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Bolstering Enterprises With ERP and PLM Solutions

CHEAH KOK HOONG, Group CEO / Director

The Book of Ecclesiastes says, ‘Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor’. This saying holds true in the business world as it does in our day-to-day lives. Collaboration maximizes efficiency and expedites our reach to a common goal. It also fosters a sense of belonging among individuals, sparks creativity and boosts morale. Given the obvious benefits of working together, joint venture among established organizations make for a good business case, more so in today’s competitive marketplace. Hitachi Sunway Information Systems ("Hitachi Sunway")—a joint venture between Hitachi and Sunway Information Systems Sdn Bhd—is a shining example of what organizations can achieve by collaborating, reaching far beyond their individual capacities; both the organizations have an illustrious history of success, but after having merged elevated their organization’s success to a whole new level.

Established in 2013, Hitachi Sunway is a joint venture between Hitachi Systems, Ltd. and Sunway Technology Sdn Bhd. The company is leading by the vision to be the one-stop ICT solutions and services provider in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. In a short span of time, it has created trust for itself among some of the most sought after clients in the industry and in the process, has won innumerable prestigious awards. ‘Computerworld Customer Care Award (Systems Integration), 2014’, 'Siemens Top Partner AusSEAN of FY2015',‘VMware Partner of The Year (SMB), 2014’,‘Outsourcing Malaysia Best Data Centre Project, 2014 and ‘Dell Top Enterprise Solutions Group Partner, 2014’ are some of the major accolades the organization has bagged. These awards unequivocally vouch for the company’s technical competency and understanding of the client’s business needs.

Positioning in a Rapidly Changing Landscape

Internal business processes act as a workflow engine for an organization and optimizing them is the best way to achieve operational excellence. However, some of these processes are not core to the business and can easily be outsourced so that an organization can focus on its core business components such as R&D, innovation, marketing and branding. Information technology (IT) is one of the prominent business functions which can be outsourced and be optimized to achieve greater efficiency and cost savings. As more and more organizations move towards optimizing their IT functions, there is a huge demand for professional organizations that can deliver ICT services with deep expertise, best practices knowledge and industry experience. Hitachi Sunway has successfully positioned itself as one of the most sought after service providers in the ICT space. The organization provides business, technology and engineering solutions—a demanding and rapidly growing service in the industry.

Armed with a pool of 400 experienced professionals and certified consultants & engineers, Hitachi Sunway serves more than 1000 customers across Malaysia and the Southeast Asian region. CHEAH KOK HOONG, Group CEO / Director explains, “Our core competency lies in our pool of talent, knowledge and technical capabilities and in providing end-to-end IT solutions that allow a business to be competitive in the marketplace.” The dynamic organization takes up IT systems infrastructure projects, positioning itself as a one-stop implementation business partner and a single point of contact for the implementation process. The company focuses on complete integration solutions and facilitates a smooth transition to ensure success. Additionally, much of the company’s success can be attributed to its unique IT offerings and expertise in the same, and to its vast IT services portfolio together with the Sunway’s branding and marketing prowess.

During its initial years, the company started out by selling and implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for its clients. Over the years, a good understanding of the industry allowed the company to restructure its services and add Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions targeting manufacturing industry customers.

By building a strong partnership with leading technology vendors, it provides effective IT solutions to numerous manufacturing verticals. It’s strategic partnerships with leading global technology leaders such as IBM, Oracle, Siemens PLM, VMware, Dell and others, Hitachi Sunway further strengthens its presence in Global Business Services (GBS). To serve its clients spread around APAC region, the organization has offices in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines & Vietnam, apart from its headquarter in Malaysia.

ERP and PLM: A Game Changing Cocktail

Designing and managing IT infrastructure in a competitive business environment is a herculean feat. When adapting to a new ERP or PLM solution, it becomes all the more crucial for organizations to guarantee support from stakeholders and device solutions based on business requirements from various departments and their feedbacks. Explaining the difficulties, CHEAH KOK HOONG adds, “Without everyone fully on-board, the new solution will not generate sufficient data to generate reports and analysis for the management.” The challenge is in mapping the business processes into the new system. Besides there are few vendors who can fully understand both business and product development processes. Often, these factors result in a poorly integrated PLM and ERP systems, lying in silos of standalone systems which users can’t fully leverage to their advantage.

In a short span of time, it has created trust for itself among some of the most sought after clients in the industry and in the process, has won innumerable prestigious awards.

Hitachi Sunway relies on its internal process to accomplish this task. The company’s PLM solutions produce data that could be repurposed throughout an organization and can help optimize product design, shorten time-to-market and streamline downstream processes. The data collected, transforms the way products are developed. ERP, on the other hand, focuses on business and planning processes for various business functions such as sales, financial, inventory, logistics, distribution, human resources and production. ERP and PLM are complementary to each other and Hitachi Sunway possesses knowledge and technical know-how to integrate both the solutions to provide clients with strategic advantage.

Hitachi Sunway boasts of implementing Oracle JD Edwards and Siemens PLM solutions. The company extensively offers solutions to cater to different market requirements. It also provides solutions from Infor, Netsuite, Moldex3D, and Zuken. On top of that, offers mobile solutions, which can facilitate secure, real-time updates between the back-end ERP systems and can also be used on the shop floor.

Learning and Moving Ahead

In addition to its ERP and PLM solutions, Hitachi Sunway also offers other enterprise applications such as Mobile Supply Chain, e-Procurement and Social Collaboration solutions. CHEAH KOK HOONG says, “All our enterprise application implementation is supported by our Infrastructure & Managed Services team. The team can plan, design and maintain an optimized IT infrastructure.”

For a medium voltage electrical power distribution equipments company, Hitachi Sunway optimized its manufacturing resources to achieve better design and higher quality output in just six months. For yet another customer, the company went out of its way to design a solution covering various production stages—from purchasing of raw material, tracking of bills of material (BOM) at multiple levels, shelf-life of raw material to managing the waste from the production line.

Hitachi Sunway has adapted to a hub-and-spoke business model, enabling it to provide integrated and seamless support to its customers. Today, the company is well positioned to support companies that have branches overseas or are planning to expand their business operations in this region. Other prestigious award won by the company include ‘IBM Partner of the Year 2014’, ‘Lenovo Top System x Reseller of FY14/15, 2015’, and ‘Outsourcing Malaysia Excellence Awards for Best Infrastructure Management Project, 2015’. The company also has Japanese operations team to support Japanese Oriented Companies (JOCs) clients in the region.

CHEAH KOK HOONG sums up, “We will continue to strengthen our market position as one of the top, trusted, one-stop ICT partner in Southeast Asia for a diverse range of industry verticals.” Going forward, the company plans to provide cloud-based solutions, expand ERP offerings and develop customer relationship management, supply chain planning, financial consolidation, planning, budgeting and procurement solutions to bolster its next phase of growth.