Instructor Introduction

Hung Chih-Wen, Deputy General Manager of the Southeast Asia Business Division at Dingxin Digital , has over fifteen years of experience in the Southeast Asian market. He specializes in the operational management, digitalization implementation, and organizational process establishment of multinational manufacturing companies in Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. From the inception of the Vietnam team, he has been dedicated to building a local service system, growing it from a five-person team to a team of over one hundred. He has accumulated experience in localizing and transforming the business for hundreds of Taiwanese companies, covering industries such as electronics, textiles, footwear, and metal processing. He excels at using local language and cultural perspectives to help companies quickly implement and establish standardized management practices. With data-driven decision-making, process systematization, and ESG implementation as core principles, he assists companies in building sustainable competitiveness in overseas markets.

With accelerated expansion in Southeast Asia, the real challenge lies in "management" rather than "production capacity."

Over the past decade, Southeast Asia has gradually become the core of global supply chain restructuring. Vietnam's booming manufacturing sector, Thailand's mature industrial chain, and Malaysia's policies that continue to promote foreign investment have attracted a large number of Taiwanese businesses to actively set up factories overseas.

However, many companies only realize after they have actually settled in a new location that adding new equipment and expanding production lines is not difficult; the real challenge is ensuring that management systems operate stably in a different location .

Hong Zhiwen, Deputy General Manager of Dingxin Digital's Southeast Asia Business Unit, has assisted hundreds of companies in setting up factories and implementing systems in Southeast Asia over the past fifteen years. He has observed a common phenomenon:

The key to the success of overseas factories lies not in how quickly production capacity can be brought online, but in whether management can keep up in a timely manner.

Language, tax system, and cultural differences, coupled with reduced information transparency due to cross-border distance, have led many companies to experience a sense of disparity where "what works in Taiwan is completely different overseas."

Therefore, when companies establish operations in ASEAN, the first thing they should address is not expanding production capacity, but rather establishing a sound management structure .

Three major questions for companies going global: Every company asks these questions, and they have a profound impact on everyone.

In the process of guiding companies going global, Hong Zhiwen summarized the three most frequently asked questions, and these three questions almost directly determine whether an overseas factory can get off to a successful start.

1. Can we directly use a Taiwanese ERP system?

Many companies initially hoped to use VPNs or cross-border connections to allow their overseas factories to directly use Taiwan's existing ERP systems.

This does save time conceptually: the same logic, the same information, and the same permissions.

However, in practice, the following challenges often arise:

These factors have led businesses to gradually understand:

Sharing systems across oceans is not impossible, but it is not suitable for most overseas factory environments.

Local deployment can actually bring stability, resilience, and higher adoption rates.

Second, if the system lacks a local language, importing it will face severe obstacles.

Southeast Asian factories primarily employ Vietnamese, Thai, and Malaysian workers, and language differences directly impact system adoption rates.

Without support for the local language, on-site workers must rely on guesswork, translation, or verbal communication, which can easily lead to:

Language may seem like a detail, but in cross-border management, it is the front line for whether a system can be truly implemented.

3. Is there local service? Can you provide immediate support?

Taiwanese consultants possess expertise, but they often face limitations when providing international services:

Therefore, most successful companies that have successfully launched their businesses share a common characteristic:

Find a system partner that can provide local language, local manpower, and local support.

Kingdee has established large-scale teams in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand to meet the urgent needs of Taiwanese businesses for "local consultants." These local consultants can communicate directly with frontline staff in Vietnamese, Thai, or Malay, significantly improving both the speed of implementation and the quality of communication.

Localization is not a feature, but a necessary condition for factories in Southeast Asia.

Beyond language, localization also includes tax and financial systems, currency, digital currency, e-invoices, and ESG calculation methods. Without systematic support for these aspects, factory management will face continuous gaps and errors.

Currency and amount: Vietnam's hundreds of millions of dollars are not an exception

For example, a single order in Vietnamese Dong often amounts to "hundreds of millions".

If the system has insufficient bit depth or does not support large amounts of money, the data will be directly distorted.

This is not an exceptional case, but a reality that we encounter every day.

Financial reporting and tax systems in various countries: must fully comply with local regulations.

Financial statement formats, accounting standards, and tax filing methods vary from country to country.

If the system does not comply with local regulations, it will directly lead to discrepancies in accounts, failure in audits, and even the risk of penalties.

Electronic invoices: A policy focus amid Southeast Asia's accelerated development.

Vietnam has made electronic invoices mandatory across the board; Malaysia and Thailand are also pushing for this.

If businesses continue to rely on manually issuing invoices and then manually re-entering them into the system, it will not only waste time but also increase the error rate.

ESG calculation: Both electricity and emissions factors need to be localized.

Each country in Southeast Asia has a different carbon emission coefficient. If non-local standards are used, brand factory inspections and ESG reports will fail.

Therefore, the system must be able to apply the correct local coefficients to ensure data accuracy.

The obstacle to implementing ERP is not technology, but the chaos in the early stages of factory construction.

Most companies hesitate when setting up a factory: "We're too busy now, we'll implement the system later."

However, the chaos during the factory construction period is actually the best time to introduce the system.

The reason is simple:

Conversely, waiting until the factory believes it is "stable" before introducing the technology may lead to the following problems:

Successful companies all share the same insight:

Early intervention reduces pain; late intervention leads to prolonged blockage.

Remote management: What you really need to see is not the people on the screen, but the numbers in the system.

Many Taiwanese managers, upon starting up their overseas factories, immediately try to understand the situation through surveillance cameras. However, surveillance cameras provide very limited information, only showing whether "there are people or not."

What truly has management value are the key data fed back by the system:

These key indicators can be presented in real time via mobile phones, allowing management to make decisions based on "results and trends" rather than relying on "single data" or "on-site footage".

Hung Chih-wen emphasized:

Remote management is not centered on monitoring, but on data-driven decision-making.

Case Study: How did Zhentai Group institutionalize its management system in its overseas factory in Vietnam?

Zhentai Group has established multiple factories in Vietnam, expanding its product range from shoelaces to webbing, and has gradually become a designated supplier for international brands. Driven by the fast fashion trend, order lead times have been reduced from 90–120 days to 60 days. After deducting material delivery time, factories often only have 7–14 days left to operate.

Faced with this high-pressure environment, they must do the following:

After implementing ERP, information that previously took 1-2 weeks to compile is now presented instantly. SFT allows the business to respond to customer order status immediately, and production, procurement, and finance can also collaborate based on data.

Furthermore, because Vietnamese consultants can communicate directly with frontline employees in the local language, the speed and accuracy of implementation are significantly improved, allowing SOPs to be truly implemented rather than just "documented".

This case study demonstrates the core conditions for Taiwanese businesses to succeed overseas: standardized processes, transparent information, quantifiable management, and localized communication.

Southeast Asia presents opportunities, but what businesses truly need is "sustainable management capabilities."

When setting up factories overseas, speed is important; but for long-term success, stability is even more crucial.

Language, tax system, processes, data, and ESG are all core variables in overseas operations.

If a company can establish itself in Southeast Asia:

Then overseas factories can enter a stage of "stability, controllability, and scalability", truly achieving steady and long-term development.

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