Access Power uses Oracle ERP Cloud to boost power plant growth
Access Power boosts growth by consolidating financial operations across 15 countries.
Access Power is a developer, owner, and operator of power assets in emerging and frontier markets. The company is today one of the fastest growing independent power producers in emerging markets, and is currently developing renewable energy projects worth more than US$1 billion in 20 countries across Africa and Asia. The firm’s mid-size modular projects can be readily integrated into the existing grid, providing power for the populations of fast growing, energy-poor markets. Access Power is technology agnostic and focuses on developing affordable and sustainable power assets.
Because many countries in which Access Power invests have complex and varying tax and accounting standards, the company found it increasingly challenging to manage costs centrally, which drove the need for a flexible and comprehensive financial management solution to aid its growth plans.
“Oracle ERP Cloud enables us to work across different countries with multi-faceted regulations and varying accounting practices, and has the flexibility for us to manage both the complex development and ongoing operation of new sustainable energy plants—greatly facilitating our growth plans.”
Business challenges
- Replace the existing accounting system, which was unable to grow with the business, with a modern, complex, scalable enterprise resource planning (ERP) system capable of managing multiple large-scale power plant development projects in several countries
- Enhance complex financial operations for plant development and management by minimizing manual processes and enabling reconciliation of financial data from numerous sources
- Improve financial controls by enabling users to instantly view costs and transactions for each power plant
- Increase the efficiency and productivity of accounts payable and receivable by reducing processing time and minimizing errors
Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud stood out compared to solutions from SAP, Microsoft, and others because of its flexibility, long-term cost effectiveness, scalability, and security. Oracle’s deep functionality is critical for our complex, large-scale power plant projects, and could not be matched by other vendors.
Results
- Increased efficiency of financial operations in 15 countries throughout the Middle East and Africa by consolidating disparate financial processes onto Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud, providing users with immediate access to accurate and up-to-date financial data for each power plant
- Boosted business expansion thanks to a comprehensive, scalable ERP system with the flexibility to manage multi-year plant development projects as well as their continued operation in multiple countries
- Provided the ability to reconcile various types of accounting transactions from multiple sources, considerably reducing month-end closing for each entity, while providing faster and more accurate reports to the management team
- Improved financial management processes—crucial for a company investing in, developing, and operating energy plants where electricity is then sold to various governments—thanks to the ability to track all costs and transactions at all times
- Increased payment productivity and achieved considerable savings due to the ability to make electronic payments, take advantage of early payment discounts with suppliers, and avoid penalties for late payments
- Met the sustainability requirements of lenders, local governments, and regulatory authorities by moving to electronic financial processes and eliminating paper—also significantly reducing transaction processing costs and data entry errors
- Increased financial transparency and efficiency by using Oracle Project Costing Cloud Service and Oracle Expenses Cloud Service to instantly view costs accrued to date on each plant development, which was impossible with the previous system
Partners
For its implementation, Access Power used Oracle Partner AppsLink, which successfully completed the project in just two months, within the allocated budget, and in time to complete year-end closing.
“We selected Oracle Partner AppsLink because of its implementation experience, highly qualified team, and professional approach. AppsLink showed considerable initiative and increased our team’s own technology understanding, and we now use AppsLink for support thanks to the successful relationship,” Junaid said.