PT. Mowilex Indonesia

Painting a Superior Environment

The simplicity of paint belies its impact. A fresh coat of colour can warm a home, energise a workplace, or bring calm to a school or community centre. PT. Mowilex Indonesia (Mowilex) offers rich, vibrant hues to create distinctive spaces while embracing a culture of responsibility. Since launching the first Indonesian-made water-based paints in 1970, the company has championed environmental stewardship, ethical operations and community support. Today, Mowilex is the country’s first and only certified carbon-neutral paint manufacturer, producing zero- and low-VOC paints aligned with global health and sustainability standards.

Mowilex’s commitment to responsible manufacturing extends deep into the company’s operations. For nearly two decades, Chief Revenue Officer (and longtime former CFO) Esther Sugiono has helped Mowilex modernise, strengthen governance and build the digital infrastructure required to compete internationally. In 2024, the company decided to migrate to Epicor Kinetic, a cloud-based solution that unlocked new levels of scalability, auditability, and environmental impact monitoring.

Eliminating Upgrade Bottlenecks

Sugiono was originally recruited to Mowilex to guide and accelerate the company’s modernisation efforts. She revealed, “Mowilex is always chasing improvement. We always want to be at least one step ahead of the competition.” The proof? In 2025, Deloitte named Mowilex one of Indonesia’s Best Managed Companies for the fourth consecutive year.

A key area for improvement was in ERP. Microsoft Dynamics AX was used for more than 15 years, but over time, the limitations became impossible to ignore. Mowilex tasked the UK-based Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) with assessing leading ERP brands. “After a comprehensive seven-month evaluation, we chose Epicor Kinetic as the best fit because it is designed for manufacturing companies.” Sugiono disclosed.

With a prior vendor staying on top of upgrades with an on-premise environment proved to be a challenge that they didn’t want to replicate with Epicor. “We had an experience with another software package that ended up being 10 years out of date, and we just didn’t want the hassle any longer,” Sugiono recalled. “We made the strategic decision to migrate to Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud in May 2024, ensuring that we stay current, scalable, and ready for future growth.”

The project went live in 2025, and the first few months brought the challenges expected for an organisation shifting its operations to the cloud. But collaborative support from Epicor helped enabling rapid resolution. Sugiono cited one example: “We didn’t want too many customisations. Once you start down that road, you might as well just build your own solution. But there were a few vital customisations we required, and the Epicor team was right there every step of the way to tune the solution to exactly fit our needs.”

The benefits have been immediate and meaningful: measurable IT hours recouped from managing hardware and staying on top of upgrades that now happen automatically, keeping Mowilex operations humming along without downtime. Furthermore, investment in consultants to help manage upgrades has been eliminated.

Real-Time Insights, Immediate Action

One of the most transformative outcomes of Mowilex’s cloud migration is the seamless flow of operational data from Epicor Kinetic into Power BI, enabling real-time, auditable insights across every division.

Previously, teams relied on manual reconciliation, making it difficult to spot trends or respond quickly to issues. Today, Epicor helps provide a single source of truth, and Power BI brings that data to life. “All departments rely on dashboards now,” explained Sugiono. “We don’t wait for month-end closings—we make decisions the moment the data tells us something.”

With live data available at the click of a button, Mowilex can monitor sales performance by region, branch and product line, improve promotion strategies, strengthen logistics planning and enhance financial accuracy.

Sugiono shared an illustration of how this visibility reshaped daily operations: “If a branch falls behind on a key product line, we see it the same day. We can launch a promotion, adjust pricing or contact customers immediately. That used to take weeks.”

The result is an organization that not only moves nimbly but also communicates and collaborates more effectively. Departments no longer operate in silos; instead, every team has visibility into how decisions in one area affect performance in another. “Epicor lets every department understand what’s happening across the company. We don’t need to call each other because we can see it instantly,” Sugiono clarified.

Built for Accurate Carbon Accounting

Mowilex’s commitment to sustainability is part of its DNA. Corporate culture is intentionally built on “good corporate citizenship,” a philosophy that has guided its decisions for more than a half century. Hundreds of schools, community parks and religious organisations have received Mowilex paint through long-running CSR programs and the company supports various conservation efforts.

While providing the accurate, consistent sustainability data clients depend on, Epicor help to enable a compilation of the detailed source information required for credible carbon reporting, including electricity usage in kWh and fuel consumption in litres. Previously, much of this data existed only as financial values, which cannot be used for emissions calculations. “If we don’t capture the source values, we cannot calculate carbon properly,” Sugiono noted. “Epicor Kinetic provides the foundation for easy, accurate carbon accounting.”

With Epicor, teams now enter operational units, providing sustainability teams with the granular information needed for carbon accounting, carbon-cost accrual and certification processes. Sugiono elaborated, “Carbon calculations follow standard formulas. The real complexity lies in collecting precise operational inputs; it is the hardest part for every company. Epicor Kinetic has become essential to this goal.”

Epicor’s structured data flows into Power BI to form an auditable ESG dashboard used for carbon-cost accrual and sustainability certifications, including recognition from SCALE International. By embedding sustainability data in its core systems, Mowilex has created a strong foundation for future carbon accounting requirements and strengthened its long-standing leadership in eco-friendly manufacturing.

Smooth-Coat Compliance

Tax compliance in Indonesia is complex and highly regulated. Epicor Kinetic has helped significantly reduce this burden for Mowilex by automating core tax processes and aligning system updates with Indonesian tax rules. With standardised data structures and built-in local tax reporting formats, the finance team can now generate accurate reports quickly, eliminating the manual compilation and 24-hour data-prep cycles that were common in the past. 
As Sugiono observed, “Epicor saves us time, reduces errors, and gives us confidence during audits.”

Furthermore, Mowilex quickly discovered that the system’s structured, traceable data simplifies certification processes. ISO standards—which Mowilex is currently pursuing—require consistency, documentation and full traceability across the business, areas where Epicor naturally excels. “Epicor gives us an auditable system with clear data trails,” Sugiono highlighted. “Even though compliance wasn’t our original goal, the structured data has made our certification journey much easier.”

A Brilliant, Sustainable Outlook

With Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud, Mowilex is well positioned to expand its mission of creating high-quality environments while reducing its environmental footprint. And continued partnership with Epicor is helping the company achieve Industry 4.0 certification locally and globally. Sugiono summarized, “We are very happy with Epicor. The SaaS solution improved our processes, accelerated decision-making, and advanced our sustainability efforts. We are ready for the future.”