Nagase Vietnam Company Limited

Vietnam's economic landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, with a strong emphasis on digitalization and technological advancement. In 2024, the country's digital economy expanded at a record pace, accounting for 18.3% of its GDP and growing over 20% annually - three times faster than the national GDP growth rate. Amid Vietnam dynamic business environment, Nagase Vietnam Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of the Nagase Group, a leading Japanese trading firm with nearly 30 years of presence in Vietnam, has positioned itself as a pioneer in digital innovation to harness the country's business growth. The company's commitment to change is evident through its focus on automating tasks and workflows across departments, ensuring collaboration and improved productivity. As Vietnam continues to prioritize digital transformation, companies like Nagase Vietnam are at the forefront, driving innovation and contributing significantly to the nation's economic growth.

In 2023, Nagase Vietnam’s leadership made a bold and decisive move - it was time to embark on digital transformation and streamline back-office processes. For this, Nagase received proposals from many different companies offering to become implementation partners. However, Mr. Masai Tsutomu, the company’s Director, had a deeper perspective: “Currently, many Nagase’s partners and competitors had already joined the race, making digital transformation & applying technology inevitable. But instead of spending a lot of money buying systems, why not use those resources to invest in our employees? After all, they would represent the company’s true core values and serve as a valuable learning investment for our employees. So, we continuously asked ABeam – one of the potential partners at that time: “Please guide us, how to implement such system by ourselves.” 

It was a great idea, but Mr. Masai faced another major challenge: most of Nagase’s employees worked in the back-office section, meaning they would struggle to adopt innovative technology. Additionally, there were concerns that their workload might increase – which turns out completely opposite to Nagase’s goal in implementing digital solutions. This presented a significant challenge, requiring serious investment and a dedicated partner to support.

Knowing the needs of Nagase, ABeam has presented a groundbreaking new model - an innovative "Center of Excellence" (CoE) for digital technologies. This model places citizen developers – regular back-office employees – at the heart of digital transformation initiatives. The proposed approach is defined in 3 phases: Training, Trial, and Expansion – during which ABeam team will work closely with Nagase for the first 10 weeks to help citizen developers quickly develop capabilities in using digital technology.

After the Trial phase, once developers have grown comfortable and are able to work independently on RPA projects, ABeam will start transitioning to an advisory position which will provide lessons learned & best practices to help the Nagase CoE team develop even further. This methodology perfectly aligns with Nagase's needs, and the project was launched shortly after the initial proposal, demonstrating both companies' commitment to rapid digital transformation.

The journey began with an intensive three-day training program that immediately captured widespread interest within Nagase. At peak attendance, 50 employees participated both online and in-person, indicating the organization's enthusiasm for embracing robotic process automation (RPA) technology. What made the training particularly effective was its direct hands-on approach. By the end of the classroom sessions, employees had already created simple robots that could immediately benefit their daily tasks. This early taste of success created momentum and excitement that carried through the entire project.

Following the initial training phase, Nagase identified five key employees across two groups to form the core of their new Center of Excellence team. These developers - regular business users rather than IT specialists - became the driving force behind the company's automation initiatives. The newly formed CoE team wasted no time putting their training into practice. Within just 10 weeks of the project launch, the team had successfully developed and deployed two fully functional RPA robots into Nagase's production environment as per the original schedule. What made this achievement particularly notable was that it was accomplished primarily by business users who had limited prior experience with digital technologies. 

Following the initial success, Nagase opted to continue its partnership with ABeam Consulting through a part-time advisory service arrangement. This strategic decision provided the CoE team with ongoing access to ABeam's expertise while allowing them to develop greater independence in their automation journey. In the span of one year, Nagase expanded from the initial 02 robots to an impressive fleet of 44 automation solutions deployed across the organization. Some of our complicated robots which should be highlighted are: Key SGA expense into SAP, Check MSDS files, Prepare chemical report…. This represents a 2,200% increase in their automation capabilities. Through their automation initiatives, Nagase could save approximately 2,000 hours of manual work annually, freeing employees to focus on supporting sales support activities – which helps Nagase growth further on the market. This is the most crucial takeaway in the direction of the Company – together Nagase can increase profit by investing the time saved and resources to support the Sales Division.

Not just the numbers alone, Nagase now can achieve other notable results strategically. Nagase have changed from a vertical culture of specific fields to a Specialty + DX culture. Every staff from each department is proposing/building technology on their own. This transformation has empowered employees across the organization to leverage their domain expertise while embracing digital transformation tools. By enabling specialists to directly implement robotic process automation solutions without relying solely on IT departments, Nagase have created a more agile environment where innovation can emerge from any corner of the company.

In the world of business and technology consultancy, the term "partnership" is often used liberally. However, the collaboration between ABeam Consulting and Nagase demonstrates what it truly means to be a "real partner" in business transformation. What began as targeted engagement in specific markets has evolved into a comprehensive strategic alliance spanning multiple countries, with ambitions that extend far beyond. ABeam Consulting has demonstrated its commitment to Nagase by not just stopping at RPA but also expanding the focus to other technologies, including Power Platforms, Low Code solutions, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Generative AI (GenAI). 

While the success stories in Vietnam and the Philippines have been particularly noteworthy - especially the remarkable RPA implementation that scaled from 02 to 44 robots in just one year in Vietnam and new system implementation in Philippines - these achievements represent just chapters in a much larger narrative. The partnership now spans four key Southeast Asian markets: Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and targets globally in the future.

Looking back at the journey, Mr. Masai shared that: “Nagase’s journey with ABeam has been characterized by mutual trust, a shared vision, and continuous support from the first day of this project. We would like to extend our gratitude to ABeam Project team for their invaluable methodology and the outstanding results we have achieved together. Thanks to this collaboration, Nagase Vietnam’s business users are no longer limited to traditional office tasks - they now have the tools and confidence to innovate with IT independently. More importantly, they can now take the lead in driving technology initiatives, aiming to be the champion of digital transformation within the organization.

In the future, as my assignment expands to Thailand, I would like to adapt the same working style and model to Nagase Thailand. However, this transformation isn't solely our effort—we've accomplished through our valuable partnership with ABeam. I'm deeply grateful to ABeam for their instrumental role in changing our organizational culture, and I eagerly anticipate our continued collaboration as we extend these successful practices to our Thailand operations. Their expertise has been crucial in our journey toward a Specialty + DX culture, and it will be equally important as we scale this approach across our regional presence.”