2. 2 0 1
Epic Group gets futuristic with a
new tech management initiative
3. 2 0 2 July 2016
EPIC GROUP
Arindam Sinha,
CIO at the Epic
Hong Kong Office
Established in 1971,
Epic has successfully
transitioned from a
buying agent to today
being a multinational
company with world
class manufacturing
facilities in Asia,
employing over
20,000 people
4. I
n the world of high-volume textile
manufacturing, there are three
factors that corporate leaders
must ensure are operating in perfect
equilibrium: people, processes
and technology. Arindam Sinha,
the Chief Information Officer at
Epic Group, knows just how crucial
it is to achieve a balance in the
triad, which is why he has recently
overhauled the multinational
garment manufacturer’s
entire IT infrastructure.
Epic Group was established
in 1971 in Hong Kong, where
it cemented itself as a major
manufacturer of silk garments for
the American market. In 1990,
the company set up its own
manufacturing plant and has since
become a key global player in the
industry, producing apparel for
internationally-renowned brands
like Wal-Mart, JC Penney, VF,
Levis and Nordstrom. Today, Epic
employs over 20,000 people in
both its manufacturing facilities in
Bangladesh and Vietnam and its
corporate hub in Hong Kong.
w w w. e p i c h k . c o m 2 0 3
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
One year ago, in the face of
massive expansion, Sinha was
brought in to be the group’s first-ever
CIO — and a programme for rapid
modernisation was set in motion.
“Technology is vital for this
organisation because this
organisation is growing at an
enormous pace and what can help
support this is a stable and strong
IT infrastructure,” Sinha says.
His vision has helped to provide
Epic Group with a converged
infrastructure to enable to
virtualisation of servers, creating
a hybrid environment of installed
and cloud computing. With an
organisation of Epic’s scope and
scale, it is vital that so-called
‘big data’ is analysed using
effective intelligence solutions
and that collaboration tools
are available at all levels.
Upon Sinha’s arrival, the
company’s first act was to create a
separate governance structure for IT,
of which the top tier is an IT Steering
Committee made up of the Board
of Directors. The next step was to
5. 2 0 4 July 2016
EPIC GROUP
N
2
distribute power and responsibility
evenly across the company’s
varied geographical locations.
“Regional and country head
roles were embedded and
included in the business, so that
these roles take care of individual
countries,” Sinha explains.
“A Global Infrastructure Head
was brought in and the regional
country Infra-Head positions were
created to take care of the same.”
The Steering Committee
further approved the creation and
appointment of an IT Strategy and
Innovation Head to guide to the
organisation in the implementation
of new thought processes like
cloud computing, digital marketing
and business intelligence.
Epic’s array of IT initiatives
has been collectively dubbed
‘EPICOMS’, and though Sinha and
his team have been managing the
company’s forward momentum,
they’ve received no small degree
of assistance from partners.
One such collaborator is Velocity
Business Solutions, a Hong Kong-
based certified Qlik Elite Solution
Provider, and the vendor of the
QlikView — a business intelligence
data visualisation tool — to Epic.
“Qlikview as a solution is very
flexible and is capable of presenting
the dashboard in a layman’s way
with high graphical representation,”
Sinha says. “Currently the Systems
6. w w w. e p i c h k . c o m 2 0 5
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
Number of employees
at Epic Group
20,000
of Differentiation — applications that support
processes unique to the organisation or its industry
— can be supported by Qlikview. And we expect
that we will have a dashboard which can be built
to support new, innovative business activities.”
Among its practical applications, the software
will supply Epic with pre-emptive analytics:
information about future orders, replenishments
and which products should be managed in
house and which might be outsourced. It will
also permit visibility of the company’s major
business KPIs, including order accomplishment
percentages, top suppliers, bottom suppliers and
revenue share of each strategic business unit.
“Most important is QlikView’s flexible
ability to work with multidimensional systems
of records. In Epic’s case, where we have
several systems of records, this stands
to be a great solution,” Sinha says.
8. w w w. e p i c h k . c o m 2 0 7
“Epicisanorganisationwhichhasgrownfrom15millionto
500millioninthespanoftenyears,itisgrowingveryrapidly.
Weareexpectingittogrowanotherhundredmillionby2018”
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
9. 2 0 8 July 2016
EPIC GROUP
However, masterminding and implementing
EPICOMS has not been a simple tale of ‘out
with the old and in with the new’. Sinha and
his associates have had to decide which
of their existing processes were worth
preserving, and which ought to be done
away with. SAP’s business enterprise
software, for instance, was partially traded
out in favour of a more adaptable solution.
With Epic’s drive to manufacture in
different locations, it is eager to have a
robust ERP system as a system of records. It
has thus implemented SAP in stages, with a
Record to Report module now utilised across
all units. With users getting the benefit of
one common database of SAP for financial
reporting and controls, Epic is now planning
to focus other modules in the coming years.
Epic used SAP primarily for FICO, its financial
accounting and controlling module.
“The change management required for SAP
in the case of the procure-to-pay cycle meant
alteration of business processes, which in turn
would have affected the competitive edge of
Epic’s business model,” Sinha explains.
Thus, it was decided that the procure-to-pay
cycle of the purchase organisations, as well as
the plan-to-produce module, should be used
partially in SAP with the rest in other subsidiary
Epic Group’s
annual revenue
Million
500+
“Thechange
management
requiredfor
SAPinthecase
oftheprocure-
to-paycycle
meantalteration
ofbusiness
processes,which
inturnwould
haveaffectedthe
competitiveedge
ofEpic’sbusiness
model”
10. w w w. e p i c h k . c o m 2 0 9
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
systems. Data is further sent to SAP,
which has become the company’s
primary system of records.
“The dynamic process change,
like purchase order alterations,
production plan changes at the
last minute, diversions of order
quantities, etc., were not so
flexible in SAP,” Sinha says.
No discussion of modern
corporate IT can take place without
mention of cloud computing. Epic
is exploring options like disaster
recovery and a licensing on
subscription model over the cloud,
and its new geographical ventures
will also find a home online.
“Most of the solutions which are
there as an installed base will be
continued to be hosted internally as
private cloud,” Sinha says. “Hence,
only the new country ventures
which are in the pipeline will be
seen on the cloud, with some of
the shared service applications
also hosted on the cloud.”
With the comprehensive scale of
the IT shakeup at Epic, Sinha has
wisely opted to forego long-term
goal setting, instead focussing
on planning and implementing
EPICOMS over the coming years.
“We don’t have a five-year
strategy, as this is the first year of
Bappaditya
Sinha
Group Head of COE
Ather Akhlaw
Group Head of COE
Delivery (Bangladesh)
11. 2 1 0 July 2016
EPIC GROUP
Phone: (852) 2358 9839
Fax: (852) 3509 0539
http://qlik.vebuso.com
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“Technology is vital for this organisation
because this organisation is growing at an
enormous pace and what can help support
this is a stable and strong IT infrastructure.”
12. w w w. e p i c h k . c o m 2 1 1
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
defining the new organisation as well
as IT Strategy,” Sinha says. “What
we have is current two-plus year
strategy to see how we sail through
the business continuity curve.”
In this time frame, Epic is striving
for better business intelligence,
integration with partners and
improved enterprise application
stacks, among many other aims.
Ultimately, Sinha’s outlook is results-
driven: IT must be optimised for Epic’s
expansion to continue. He emphasises
that technology and IT are a key part of
the company’s vision for world-class
manufacturing — as is teamwork.
“Epic is an organisation which has
grown from 15 million to 500 million in
the span of ten years; it is growing very
rapidly. We are expecting it to grow
another 100 million by 2018,” he said.
“A manufacturer gets very
little revenue. For us, it is more a
technological innovation which will
help. Whatever cost-advantage I have, I
need to maintain that over the years.”
Asif Jaffri
Head of IT
(Bangladesh)
Hien Duy
Nguyen
Head of IT (Vietnam)
Shohel Rana
Group Head of IT
Infrastructure
