Industrial Foam Manufacturer: Vietnam’s first Infor CSI ERP implementation. Disconnected operations unified into a single system, production, finance, and procurement in real time.

The Challenge

The company had grown steadily and successfully, but its operational systems had not kept pace. Data lived in separate places. Reports required manual assembly across departments and rarely aligned on first pass. Conversations that should have been straightforward required multiple follow-ups because no one was looking at the same numbers. Production, finance, procurement, and delivery were each functioning, but not functioning together. The symptoms were manageable at smaller scale. At the manufacturer’s level of complexity, specifically manufacturing foam products across multiple categories, managing export logistics, serving internationally licensed brands, and operating under Vietnamese regulatory requirements, the gaps created real operational risk. Decision-making slowed when data was uncertain. Planning became reactive rather than forward-looking. The solution could not be a standard Western ERP deployment. Vietnam has specific accounting standards, a mandatory e-invoicing system, and reporting formats that differ from international norms. Any implementation that ignored this compliance layer would create new problems while solving old ones. The client also needed a system that their Vietnamese-speaking teams could actually operate, and not just a technically correct installation that required external support to use. No ERP vendor had completed a specialized ERP (CSI) implementation in Vietnam before. The enterprise and Gradion were setting a precedent.

The Approach

NFQ (represented by Gradion) began by mapping how the manufacturer’s teams actually worked, specifically where information was generated, where it was consumed, and where the handoffs broke down. This process-first approach informed how the CloudSuite Industrial (CSI) ERP was configured, rather than requiring the client to adapt its operations to a default system layout. A specialized industrial ERP platform was selected, and Gradion led the full implementation, addressing four core areas: consolidating departmental data into a single unified system, enabling real-time tracking from production through to delivery, automating sales order entry to reduce manual data handling, and integrating the Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) module for production planning. Compliance localization was built in from the start and not retrofitted. Gradion integrated the Vietnamese e-Invoice system, aligned the platform with the Vietnamese Accounting and Reporting System, and supported the U.S. 445 Accounting Format for the company’s international reporting requirements. Barcode scanning was enabled across the warehouse system. ERP training was delivered in Vietnamese to ensure adoption was not dependent on external translators or ongoing consultant support. Post go-live, Gradion continued as a trusted advisor on several follow-on initiatives, ensuring the system evolved with the business rather than becoming a static installation.