Enterprise SOA

ESA in action: Asian Paints

Composite applications are playing an important role in companies' transformation efforts. This is certainly the case at Asian Paints, where the internal transformation strategy focuses on the creation of composites.

Asian Paints is India's largest paint manufacturer and is among the top 10 decorative coatings companies in the world, with annual revenues approaching $600 million. The company serves more than 30,000 customers in 65 countries in Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Africa. With a supply chain that includes 29 production plants located in 23 countries and a handful of global subsidiaries, Asian Paints has invested heavily in IT in recent years to automate its most important business processes, including manufacturing, distribution, and inventory control.

In 2000, the company began to migrate its core custom-developed legacy systems to the prepackaged Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other enterprise applications contained in the mySAP Business Suite. Asian Paints also adopted SAP NetWeaver as its toolkit for integration, as well as the platform for its next generation of enterprise services. With the migration nearing completion, the company has begun drafting the blueprint for the companywide strategic adoption of ESA. Its goals revolve around both internal and external integrations. Internally, the company intends to connect its new enterprise applications with its existing supply chain, ...