ACEN takes a step closer to corporate sustainability

Oct 24, 2022

With SAP S/4HANA, AC Energy now has visibility across its entities, crucial in executing strategic ways to increase solar, wind, and geothermal plant capacities while reducing inefficiencies and wastage.

Background

AC Energy (ACEN) is the listed energy platform of the Ayala Group, with over 3,000 MW of attributable capacity in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Australia. The company’s renewable share of capacity is at approximately 80%, among the highest in the region.


ACEN aspires to be the largest listed renewables platform in Southeast Asia, with a goal of reaching 5,000 MW of renewables capacity by 2025. In 2021, ACEN has announced its commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Challenge

To truly lead the charge towards a sustainable future, every aspect of the ACEN business should align with their commitment — including the way they run their business. However, without a digital business platform in place, running a business day-to-day can be challenging. Entities were set up differently, so it took more effort for teams to collaborate. Regulatory reports took time to produce, resulting in delays in decision making and project completion. People and processes were misaligned. Work often had to be redone, leading to wasted time, effort, energy, and materials.

In particular, ACEN experienced the following challenges in their operations:

  • Reporting. Entities under AC Energy were set up differently, resulting in different processes and different reporting formats. As different teams worked together to achieve a single goal, ACEN leadership needed to look at data as a whole and be able to slice and dice according to entity, department, project, etc. Consolidating these reports took days. By the time the reports were ready, the numbers had already changed. Moreover, regulatory reports strictly had to be submitted on time to comply with government and power industry mandates. More manpower was required to put together these requirements.

  • Wastage. Paper used in manual transactions and reporting added up across departments, entities, and over months. Not to mention time and energy spent by team members facilitating transactions and routing forms for physical signatures.

  • System integrity. There were no real-time updates of GL balances due to mapping issues in the old system. Moreover, there were audit findings on access controls and cybersecurity risks.


ACEN needed a digital platform that would enable them to achieve operational efficiency and support corporate sustainability.

Solution

AC Energy implemented SAP S/4HANA on Azure to put in place a unified digital business platform covering finance, procurement, inventory, and asset maintenance across multiple entities.


The project objectives were as follows:

  • Every aspect of the business must contribute towards the corporate goal of Net Zero Greenhouse Emissions by 2050. This not only pertains to the output the company produces but also in the way it operates. On a daily basis, AC Energy is expected to minimize power wastage and unnecessary consumption of materials such as paper.

  • Gain confidence of stakeholders by being a technology-enabled company with standardized and optimized processes, transparency in reporting, and fact-based and timely decision making.

  • Deploy a BIR-accredited computerized accounting system.


ACEN embarked on a greenfield implementation of S/4HANA for the Financials, Materials Management, and Plant Maintenance modules. Phase 1 was focused on establishing a golden template. Phase 2 was a rollout of the template to 11 entities, focusing on renewable solar and geothermal plants. In 2022 onwards, 25 more companies will follow suit.


ACEN’s management-led commitment to the project, along with willingness to adopt SAP best practices, made the rapid delivery possible for their chosen SAP delivery partner, delaware. Their new ERP enables ACEN to focus on chasing their goals and lead the nation into becoming sustainable and future-ready.


What AC Energy is doing is impactful work — to shareholders, employees, but most of all, to the society. delaware fully supports their goals and aspirations by providing ACEN a robust technology platform in SAP S/4HANA.
Chesca GallegosManaging Directordelaware Philippines

Outcomes

SAP S/4HANA enabled AC Energy to have visibility across its entities, which was crucial in order for ACEN teams to work together in formulating and executing strategic ways to increase solar, wind, and geothermal plant capacities while reducing inefficiencies and wastage. Moreover, harmonizing processes enterprise-wide led to standardized reporting, enhanced controls, and compliance with ISO requirements. These outcomes were recognized by the management and audit and risk committee of Ayala Corporation, the publicly listed holding company of AC Energy.

BUSINESS

  • Completion of standard financial statements on Day 7

  • Decreased error rate for audit adjustments to less than 5%

  • Increased response time by 95%

  • Standardized processes, information transparency, and speedy transactions, thanks to a centralized business platform, enabled AC Energy to improve its overall corporate governance — a must for a company that aims for environmental and organizational sustainability.

  • Because transactions are recorded real-time, reports are automatically generated on-time. These reports are important to maintain the credibility of the organization and the trust of our shareholders. Decisions are made based on facts, and more time is spent implementing new ideas instead of crunching numbers.

  • With streamlined processes on a digital platform, day-to-day operations are more efficient and effective.

  • All BIR forms are now electronically generated saving tens of thousands of sheets of paper every year.

  • The company now has the ability not just to simply monitor inventory but to optimize it —to prevent items from expiring before use. This translates into savings, not to mention eliminating waste due to unused items.

IT

  • A well-established, world-renowned secure business platform significantly reduces cybersecurity risks.

  • AC Energy achieved cost-efficiency in implementation by maintaining a centralized system that follows one configuration across different entities. The setup will also be easier to maintain in the future.

  • Inherent system controls — such as budget and access limitations — help address audit findings and maintain the integrity of the system and processes moving forward.

HUMAN EMPOWERMENT

  • Team members are able to be more productive when processing transactions in an intuitive digital platform. They are able to analyze information that would help them bring more value and get more fulfilment as they take on more strategic tasks.

  • Little technical assistance is needed as functional users are able to drill down transactions on their own. This frees up the time of the functional user and technical support.

  • Learning SAP S/4HANA is a new skill that can contribute to  the user’s career progress.

  • The organization is able to scale the business without the weight of the new workload taking a toll on its manpower. 

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