The East Asiatic Company Ltd. A/S (EAC) is setting up a new, shared IT platform to serve the group’s head office in Singapore and Denmark and Nutrition companies in Malaysia, Thailand and China. The operation and service of the new platform will be centralized in a new company, EAC Shared Services, based in Malaysia.
In the past, each company in the EAC Group used their own systems, but the implementation of a shared SAP R/3 system will offer a number of benefits, Sudhir Abdul Rahman, Group Director, Information Services, says.
“A centralized platform offers economies of scale and therefore lower costs,” he points out. “Operations in the four countries initially involved in the scheme have many common features. It clearly makes good sense to invest in a standardized solution. But naturally we shall be making allowances for local legal differences, and we shall develop variations to accommodate the fact, for instance, that Dumex in China has its own production facilities, and that head office in Singapore has a number of Group functions which require special applications.”
“We shall also be able to enjoy better and more uniform reporting, and we look forward to having a more effective sharing of knowledge across the organization and national boundaries,” he continues.
“The new setup will also make it easy for us to adopt new applications and integrate smaller existing business units and future new businesses as required.”
Responsibility for operating the new IT platform has been placed in a new company, EAC Shared Services, which is physically located in Kuala Lumpur at Dumex Malaysia’s head office. Over the next nine months EAC Shared Services, under Eduardo A. Sifontes, will implement the new service locally in the four first countries, starting with Malaysia. China should be fully operational by April 2004.
Sudhir Abdul Rahman also looks ahead.
“Over the next 2-3 years we want to extend the system to the Philippines, India and Nutrition’s Danish development unit, INC. And in the longer term the plan is for the system to be expanded with the addition of more functionality, for example, supply chain management, customer relationship management, human recourses management, etc.”
Sudhir Abdul Rahman sees the initiative and integration process as an important strategic investment for the EAC Group.
