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February 10, 2022

Solar panel manufacturer REC Group builds a solid foundation for future growth on Azure

REC Group offers high-efficient solar panels with a reliable long-term performance to provide people with clean and affordable solar power. To support its future growth and tremendous expansion plans, REC wanted to upgrade from SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) to S/4HANA and run it in Microsoft Azure with a solid Security and Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy. The company now generates reports and performs analytics much faster, leading to higher efficiency while minimizing operating costs. As ‘Solar’s Most Trusted’, it is now better equipped to make more informed business decisions and accelerate its customer centric service.

REC Group

REC Group is an international pioneering solar energy company dedicated to empowering consumers with clean, affordable solar power through high-quality solar panels with a leading power density.  The company is headquartered in Norway with operational headquarters in Singapore and regional hubs in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Under a new ownership, REC also has plans to expand its business tremendously.

To move forward, REC needed to upgrade its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to enable it to scale up and continue to meet the growing demands of its customers efficiently. It was using the legacy application SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) system and faced performance issues.

“It was difficult to maintain optimal productivity and smooth operations with the legacy application. Often, it couldn’t carry out standard processes such as retrieving serial numbers of multiple solar panels,” says Shamal De Silva, Director, Head of IT/IS, REC Group. “We also realized that it wasn’t feasible to maintain the on-premises environment because it would lead to higher total cost of ownership.”

REC aimed to be better equipped to provide higher service standards. “As a pioneering brand in a modern technology industry, we wanted to build better capabilities with the new system for our growth plans in the future. We needed to optimize the manufacturing and finance processes as well as get more visibility to drive business decisions through real-time data analysis,” explains De Silva.

Scaling up success with the cloud

To realize its expansion goals, REC decided to upgrade its legacy application to S/4HANA and run it in the Azure cloud. “Azure offered the flexibility we needed to scale up without having to worry about physical limitations of data centers. It also provided us with good data security, so we knew we could move forward confidently,” says De Silva.

The cloud also offered more value as a long-term solution. “The total cost of ownership would be worthwhile in the long run as we don’t have to spend a large amount of capital expenditure at the start of a project. We only pay for the services we use without any upfront cost,” says De Silva. REC could also tap into other functions of Azure to expand its capabilities on top of what the company already has.

Together with technology partner T-Systems—which provided valuable technical expertise—REC transitioned to S/4HANA on Azure. The implementation was also smooth sailing thanks to the Microsoft FastTrack for Azure service, where Azure engineers supported REC in designing and deploying S/4HANA in the cloud.

“The Microsoft team helped us identify ways to optimize the new cloud environment while eliminating our dependency on on-premises servers to store data,” says De Silva. “Azure also fit well into our existing environment, as we were already using Microsoft 365 services such as Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive for work collaboration.”

“Azure offered the flexibility we needed to scale up without having to worry about physical limitations of data centers. It also provided us with good system availability and data security, so we knew we could move forward confidently.”

Shamal De Silva, Director, Head of IT/IS, REC Group

Greater visibility and efficiency at work

Having upgraded to S/4HANA on Azure, REC now runs more efficient reporting and analytics by tapping into deeper insights from SAP and non-SAP data.

Combined with artificial intelligence, the ERP system quickly provides insights on any aspect of the business." The new Solution has improved the overall performance of the system. Some of the large reports that have to be scheduled in the background could run online within few minutes now,” says De Silva.

The company also gets real-time analysis in S/4HANA using Fiori applications—apps that provide easy access to common SAP functions—which enables operational reporting on live transactional data. “SAP Fiori apps give our team the tools they need to work efficiently. We can link multiple data sources in real time, which allows us to make decisions faster,” says De Silva.

Employees can now do multidimensional analytics online—breaking down information and looking deeply into data to analyze the company’s financial health. “The finance team can effectively carry out profitability, cashflow, and financial analysis without having to create custom reports,” says De Silva. “As a result, they have a clearer visibility on our spending, material production cost, and components.”

REC has also gained real-time visibility of its inventory. This is particularly important for the supply chain management and planning team to minimize the risk of overstocking or understocking, to organize the transport of supplies accordingly as well as, most importantly, continue to always ensure delivery on time to our customers.

Using the cloud has also enabled REC to manage large amounts of product information, which has been crucial for quality assurance and warranty claims. REC offers 25 years warranty for its solar panels. To keep check on warranty information or product types, REC uses a unique serial number embossed on every solar panel.

“Customers need the serial numbers to process the guarantee claims. As we produce millions of solar panels every year, we have to store millions of serial numbers, too. This is where Azure File Sync comes in—we store the images of these serial numbers on the cloud that we use to do quality checks or process warranty claims,” explains De Silva.

“The new Solution has improved the overall performance of the system, specially some of the large reports that have to schedule in background could run online within few minutes now.”

Shamal De Silva, Director, Head of IT/IS, REC Group

Equipped for future growth

Having set the cloud foundation for scalability and growth, REC is now poised to better meet the company’s expansion goals. The company is increasing its capacity in Singapore and planning to open new factories in other regions.

Recently REC started to utilize Azure platform for machine learning and building up its production data warehouse with more real-time data. The solar panel manufacturer plans to perform deeper analytics of the data to construct better work solutions.

With strong technology partners such as Microsoft, T-Systems, and SAP, the company is ready for its next bold technology innovation to drive the green energy industry forward. De Silva sums it up nicely, “Switching to new systems empowers us to better meet the ever-growing demands of our industry quickly. We can now look forward to growing our business with a strong system in the back and continue with our mission to empower people worldwide with clean solar energy.”

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