Why Japanese import businesses need a specialized ERP

Every year, Vietnam imports tens of billions of USD worth of machinery, equipment, tools, and parts from abroad — in 2024 alone, this reached 48.89 billion USD, up 17.6% year-over-year, making this category one of the country’s leading import groups [1]. Within this flow, there is a group of businesses working almost daily with the Japanese market: ordering from Japanese manufacturers, shipping to Vietnam, completing customs procedures, then distributing to domestic customers — many of whom are also Japanese companies.

This business is not new. But the tools to manage it are… old.

Fragmented systems: how most businesses operate today

Step into any small-to-medium equipment import company and you’ll see a familiar picture:

• Purchase orders live in the procurement team’s Excel file, denominated in JPY.
• Shipments are tracked via email: ask the forwarder, get a reply “estimated arrival date is…”, then manually update a different sheet.
• Customs declarations are kept by the import-export team in hard copy, paid tax amounts sit in separate tax software.
• Cost of goods is “assembled” by accounting at month-end — and usually doesn’t match, because import duties, freight, and port fees are scattered across multiple places.
• Sales documents are printed in Word, each customer gets a different template.

Each department has a good tool for its own work. But when asked the simplest question — “where is this shipment, and after adding all duties and freight, what’s the actual cost per item?” — no one can answer immediately.

The problem isn’t “need ERP” — it’s “which ERP”

Many businesses have recognized the problem and are looking for ERP. But general-purpose ERP on the market is designed for generic business: sales, purchasing, inventory, accounting. For specialized import business, the “hard parts” are missing:

• Import shipments need to track vessel, port, ETD/ETA/ATA, container, status at each stage — not just a warehouse receipt.
• Cost must accumulate correctly: import duty, import VAT, freight, and other import costs allocated to each item — get one step wrong and the entire cost chain is wrong.
• Customs declarations have a 60-day supplementary filing deadline — forget one milestone and tax risks arise.
• Japanese customers demand Japanese-style documents — 見積書 (quotation), 納品書 (delivery note), 適格請求書 (qualified invoice) — while ERP software usually prints in standard international templates.

In other words: install a general ERP, and the business still has to “patch” the specialized part with Excel — the fragmented system just changes shape, it doesn’t disappear.

The market scale behind this

This problem is bigger than individual businesses. In Vietnam, machinery and equipment are the main import group serving industrial production [1]. In Japan, according to the 2021 Economic Census by the Statistics Bureau (総務省統計局), Industrial Machinery and Equipment Wholesale (産業機械器具卸売業) is the largest wholesale category with over 38,700 establishments and over 402,000 workers — leading both in number of establishments and employment in the wholesale sector [2]. This is the supply chain that Vietnamese businesses importing Japanese goods plug into: Japanese factory → Japanese machinery wholesaler → Vietnamese import/distribution company.

The Vietnamese side of this chain — where goods arrive at port, declarations are filed, goods enter the warehouse, and are sold — is still running on the fragmented tools described above. There is no specialized ERP for this segment of the market.

Who faces this exact problem?

Three groups of businesses will recognize the description above:

1. Japanese companies with subsidiaries, factories, or offices in Vietnam — Japanese staff need Japanese interfaces and documents, reports to headquarters; Vietnamese staff work in Vietnamese, but on the same system, not two parallel Excel files.
2. Vietnamese businesses importing equipment and parts from Japan for distribution — need to track shipments, import duties, actual cost; sell to Japanese customers in Vietnam with correct Japanese-style documents.
3. Businesses drowning in scattered Excel — want a single system but don’t want to “customize from scratch” with the cost and risk of a pure ERP project.

When the problem is specialized, the solution must be specialized too.

M&C ERP — a solution built specifically for this chain

M&C ERP is a suite of business applications built on top of the open-source ERP ERPNext, specifically for businesses importing and distributing equipment and industrial parts from Japan to Vietnam: tracking shipments from JPY purchase orders to warehouse arrival, customs declarations with duty and freight allocated to cost, Japanese-style documents for customers, serial-based warranty. The entire interface is in Japanese, running in parallel with Vietnamese and English on the same data.

See product details, features, and use cases at the M&C ERP solution page.

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Facing this exact problem? Send a request for consultation and a demo account.

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References

1. General Statistics Office of Vietnam (nso.gov.vn) — “Vietnam’s export-import picture in 2024”: machinery, equipment, tools, and parts imports in 2024 reached 48.89 billion USD, up 17.6%; Customs confirmed “new record”. https://www.nso.gov.vn/du-lieu-va-so-lieu-thong-ke/2025/01/buc-tranh-xuat-nhap-khau-hang-hoa-cua-viet-nam-nam-2024-phuc-hoi-phat-trien-va-nhung-ky-luc-moi
2. Statistics Bureau of Japan — 2021 Economic Census, Industry Classification (Wholesale): Industrial Machinery and Equipment Wholesale 38,783 establishments (11.1%), 402,245 workers (10.4%) — highest in wholesale. https://www.stat.go.jp/data/e-census/2021/kekka/pdf/oroshikouri_outline.pdf