From Bottleneck to Breakthrough

GH Power knew its existing methods for managing critical financial information were outdated. This resulted in a lack of clear visibility and control over its financial data, which was frustrating and meant potential opportunities were slipping through the company’s fingers. Moreover, preparing for audits felt like navigating a labyrinth.

The company needed a modern foundation to help it resolve its current headaches and scale, keeping its ambitious green energy goals in mind. To achieve this goal, GH Power selected Nextworld.

Nextworld helped GH Power overhaul its legacy setup with remarkable results, especially in terms of the speed of modernizing the platform. This wasn’t one of those typical projects where major system modernization drags on for endless months. In close partnership with the adept team at AITO, a Nextworld partner, GH Power transitioned from its old system to fully live on the Nextworld platform in just 53 days. That is less than two months to revolutionize a core operational framework.

A Win with No-Code

How did they achieve such a lightning-fast deployment? Nextworld’s next-generation, no-code architecture was a game-changer. This approach neatly sidestepped the prolonged disruptions typically associated with significant technology upgrades.

GH Power strategically utilized Nextworld’s packaged applications for essential functions like managing their general ledger, streamlining procurement, and handling accounts payable workflows. This allowed the company to automate key processes and enhance operational efficiency almost from day one.

The impact was immediate and profound. By centralizing its financial data within the Nextworld platform, GH Power gained the crystal-clear visibility it desperately needed. Audits, once a source of dread, became quicker and more accurate.

According to Dave Chin, CPA, CA, Vice President of Finance at GH Power, his team needed a technology platform that kept pace with their needs. Nextworld gave them the tools they needed to innovate and adapt while setting up the team to scale in the future.

AITO also played a pivotal role. Its deep understanding of Nextworld’s capabilities and GH Power’s unique requirements ensured a customized approach.

Dave Baker, Applications and Project Manager at AITO, noted that his team was confident that the Nextworld platform would drive substantial value for GH Power in the future.

A Future-Ready Company

GH Power isn’t resting on its laurels. On its roadmap is the development of custom applications to meticulously track its production of thermal energy, green hydrogen, and alumina—all crucial to its mission to combat global warming.

The company also plans to create a bespoke application module to translate its carbon offset potential into carbon certificates, aiding GH Power’s global customers in their decarbonization efforts.

What This Means for ERP Insiders

Redefine agility, not just manage it. Traditional systems often focus on managing existing processes within established boundaries. However, a no-code platform like the one implemented by Nextworld for GH Power empowers professionals to create true agility. They can rapidly build and deploy new solutions or adapt existing ones as business needs pivot, slashing timelines from potential months or years to weeks or days.

Shift from gatekeeper to value enabler. An IT professional’s deep understanding of business processes and data is invaluable, and no-code platforms can transform IT professionals from being perceived as gatekeepers of complex, rigid systems into direct enablers of business innovation. It can help organizations gain the power to directly configure, extend, and even build custom applications with significantly less reliance on scarce, specialized coding talent, putting creative solutions directly into the hands of those who understand the needs best.

Scale with confidence and increase your ROI. Future-proofing an organization’s operations is about weathering the next mandatory upgrade cycle and building inherent adaptability. A no-code approach allows organizations to design and implement unique, scalable functionalities, like GH Power’s custom energy tracking and future carbon certificate applications. This means businesses can seamlessly extend their operational capabilities and address niche requirements without the complexity, cost, and risks typically associated with customizing or overhauling traditional ERP environments.

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At the heart of that journey: SAP. But for Crounse, this wasn’t a routine ERP upgrade. “This was not just about SAP—it was a digital transformation and simplification mandate,” he says. “We needed a platform that could orchestrate our global supply chain and help us deliver massive $300 million projects on time, or face serious financial penalties.”

Fluence doesn’t manufacture batteries—it orchestrates them. Its business model revolves around designing, delivering, and maintaining utility-scale energy storage systems that stabilize power grids around the world. That requires real-time visibility into a vast, globally distributed supply chain and contract manufacturing network—something Crounse says only SAP could deliver at scale.

After assessing their legacy platforms like NetSuite, Workday, and Salesforce, Fluence determined that they wouldn’t scale to $10 billion in revenue. The team initiated a 13-month SAP implementation covering finance, supply chain, analytics, and sustainability. The result? A 99.7% clean core SAP deployment on Google Cloud via RISE with SAP. “We couldn’t afford custom processes,” Crounse said. “Clean core and standardization were essential to scale at this velocity.”

Speed, in fact, has been a strategic mantra for Crounse. “Speed over perfection,” he says. “In hypergrowth, an MVP mindset is critical. You can’t wait for perfect—you iterate, pivot, and move.”

That mindset also shaped how Fluence approached its implementation partners. While Deloitte handled the front end, Crounse emphasized the importance of transition planning. “I didn’t want to be on the consultant drug forever,” he joked. “We deliberately brought in a boutique partner and built a global delivery model to move from lights-on support to sustainable internal operations.”

Fluence’s SAP footprint is large: it spans S/4HANA, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), Integrated Business Planning (IBP), Sustainability Control Tower, and Signavio. “This wasn’t a finance-only project,” Crounse emphasized. “It was about end-to-end orchestration—from project inception to delivery and long-term asset maintenance.”

With installations across 24 countries and a growing physical presence in strategic markets like India, Germany, and the U.S., Fluence’s localization strategy relies heavily on SAP’s global capabilities. “Made-in-America is part of our strategy, but so is ‘sold-by-Germans-in-Germany’—it’s about being present where sustainability matters most,” Crounse said.

SAP’s role at Fluence also extends into sustainability and AI. As a green energy company, Fluence is exploring SAP Green Ledger and other emerging tools. “We were one of the first to sign up for RISE,” says Crounse. “But I’ve told SAP: I don’t want to be half-in. We need end-to-end cloud-native capabilities, especially as we lean into AI and agent-based operations.”

While Crounse doesn’t foresee AI fundamentally reshaping Fluence’s core engineering work in the short term, he does see operational use cases exploding. “Can I cut my development team by 20% with GenAI? Can we automate testing or generate telemetry insights from our battery systems? These are the questions I’m asking today,” he said.

Fluence’s systems already collect data from thousands of IoT-connected devices, calling home to report temperature changes, performance degradation, or potential safety risks. “Our Battery Management System (BMS) sends alerts like: ‘I’m overheating—turn me down or I’ll shorten my lifespan,’” said Crounse. “This telemetry is where GenAI and SAP tools like AI Core and the Sustainability Control Tower can have real impact.”

The value isn’t just internal. Fluence’s long-term strategy revolves around recurring revenue from post-installation service and maintenance—an area that increasingly relies on smart analytics, AI, and predictive maintenance driven by SAP’s integrated platform capabilities.

For those embarking on similar journeys, Crounse offers straightforward advice: “Keep moving. You won’t hire perfect candidates, you won’t scope perfect processes—but the faster you move, the faster you learn, pivot, and scale. That’s how we’re building Fluence for the long run.”

What this means for ERP insiders

Think clean core for real scale. Fluence’s 99.7% clean core SAP deployment allowed it to grow from $900 million to $4 billion in two years—without tripping over customization bloat. For CIOs facing hypergrowth, clean core isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a requirement. SAP S/4HANA’s standardized processes and modular extensions (like SAP BTP and Signavio) let companies move fast while retaining governance and future-proofing their enterprise stack.

Make your supply chain predictive, not reactive. Fluence treats its global supply chain as a dynamic network, not a linear chain. SAP IBP and SAC provide forward-looking insights that help avoid penalties for late delivery on $300M projects. Tech leaders should invest in predictive analytics and supply chain orchestration platforms that turn data into timely action—especially in capital-intensive industries like energy, aerospace, and automotive.

Lean into sustainability and AI – but don’t get stuck in pilots. From Green Ledger to AI-generated code, Fluence is moving beyond buzzwords. CIOs should evaluate how SAP’s AI Core, Joule, and Sustainability Control Tower integrate with real business scenarios. Don’t pursue AI as a science project—pursue it to reduce headcount where possible, automate processes, and deliver smarter service to customers already demanding accountability and uptime.

The post From SAP Sapphire 2025: Fluence Commits to ‘Speed Over Perfection’ on Hypergrowth Trajectory with SAP appeared first on ERP Today.

The Client

Lightsource bp is a global leader in the development and management of solar energy projects. They provide sustainable and affordable energy to businesses and communities and have been in operation since 2010. The company’s primary focus is to meet the rising demand for energy through smart, responsible and sustainable measures, reimagining energy and enacting real change on the global energy landscape.

To find out more about Lightsource bp, visit their website here.

The Challenge

Lightsource bp’s previous solution was implemented when the company was much smaller, and only facilitated basic incidents and requests. As a result, gaining valuable management information through accurate analysis, or categorisation of tickets logged and processed, was proving to be difficult.

On top of this, system navigation (both frontend and backend) was challenging, leading to a less-than ideal user experience both for the customer and the agent. Overall, there was tangible room for improvement within the organisation, and this needed to be addressed.

The Solution

Having already acknowledged the need for a change, Lightsource bp decided that ServiceNow was the platform of choice to help them improve their end-users’ experience. Their joint venture with bp (an existing ServiceNow customer) meant they could lean on this partnership to get the most value possible out of the new investment.

Inetum UK&I were positioned by Gartner as the ideal ServiceNow partner for this project, given our reputation for accelerated implementations (catering to faster time to value from the initial client investment). Inetum UK&I build partnerships with clients that are focused on the long-term vision of the platform rather than just the original implementation; this allows for ServiceNow to become an integral part of the business.

For phase 1, Inetum UK&I implemented ServiceNow ITSM for the customer including Incident, Problem and Change Management, Service Catalogue and Request Management. Additionally, capabilities including Service Level Reporting, an intuitive and streamlined end user portal and an Azure AD integration were implemented.

The Benefits

Lightsource bp’s team are now working with a far superior user experience. The new portal with its extended functionality is proving invaluable to the customer, working at a much more user-friendly level.

The team are now able to share the current status of services that may be disrupted due to an upgrade or other planned outage; this helps to reduce the volume of calls and incidents, and has allowed for quicker and more accurate decisions to be made.

In addition, service desk related company-wide communication has drastically improved. The new single workflow has enabled much better fulfilment of requests and scalability, meaning they can now make use of the data driven flows in order to achieve a more streamlined fulfilment process. The foundations of CSDM have been introduced with basic services and components, giving them a structure with which to build their services and better understand what is driving their business.

“Everyone in the team has only good things to say about our new ServiceNow implementation. We have teams across the business wanting to onboard too, so the ultimate goal is to have the entire organisation getting value from the platform.”

Christine Burridge

Head of Programme Management – IT and Digital Transformation at Lightsource bp

The Future

Lightsource bp have fantastic expansion plans and are growing at a rapid pace. While their ServiceNow investment is still in its initial stages, it has allowed them to support that growth much more efficiently, making it an essential supporting catalyst for business expansion.

The organisation has already identified that ServiceNow is a continual service improvement platform, and have highlighted a number of new features and enhancements they would like to see as part of the future ITSM roadmap. This includes looking at extra services that Inetum UK&I offer outside of our traditional professional delivery services.

The end goal for Lightsource bp is to extend the use of ServiceNow across the entire organisation, so that all processes are unified and maximum transformation potential is unlocked.

For more information on how Inetum UK&I could help your business, please get in touch with one of the team.

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With all of its business processes running on SAP, Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company, has embarked on a Next-Gen Project – a transition to S4/ HANA, with the ambition for it to make an impact beyond a mere technical upgrade. 

But faced with considerable project demands, how can leaders handle it all?

“Someone in my team did an estimation that it would take us at least 20 years to finish the project if we were going with a test strategy. Then what about lift and shift? We could do that, it would be easier – but we’d miss out on so much,” Ingrid Marie Larsen Gaarder, delivery area lead for procurement in Equinor’s upgrade project, mused at the recent SAPinsider EMEA conference.

This is when Equinor, which is on its own grand-scale transition journey to renewables, recognized the clean core concept as a means to reduce technical depth as part of its upgrade. 

“We were aiming to transform the way we work, the business processes, the technical landscape and the platforms,” Frank Stødle, lead developer and product owner for development and UX in the Equinor upgrade project, shared to an audience of SAP Insiders.

The project was set up to transform business processes and technical landscapes, with a focus on a clean core approach, something Stødle can see evolving: “I hadn’t heard anyone else use it outside of the SAP domain. But as time evolved, I think the whole clean core concept evolved into more of a philosophy going beyond software, also integrating data processes and operations.”

The interconnection between clean core and reduced technical debt also became part of the project’s foundation as “to me, clean core is a means to reduce technical depth if you do a 100 percent clean type of implementation, You will reduce the technical debt, [although] you will not eliminate it,” Stødle says.

Being presented with the opportunity to start afresh and get rid of the things that will prevent upgrades in the future, the Equinor team was faced with the question of how to make the most out of this opportunity. 

Equinor’s Next-Gen ERP project

After the project adopted a hybrid agile methodology that allowed teams to strike a balance between structure and flexibility and formed functional teams to manage the project, Equinor faced some challenges with extensive custom code. Accordingly, it decided to standardize processes to fit SAP’s requirements. 

Embarking on this journey of innovation, Larsen Gaarder shares that instead of “changing everything in SAP to fit their needs and overcomplicating the space, the team decided to change the process to fit the standard”.

Ultimately, the team focused on the implementation of the custom solution management system, built on SAP Fiori elements, tracking code quality via a three-star rating system, with ratings managed by lead developers. 

With governance being an essential part of how the project was executed, the team introduced some tooling to support and streamline the governance process. “We created a website because I have an obsession with not hiding your guidelines, your governance and best practice in Word documents and team sites,” Stødle says.

Equinor opted for a nice-looking, searchable website where developers and all the teams can easily retrieve and use the guidelines. This website was built using a tool called MK docs, an open-source tool combined with GitHub and Markdown. “So that’s a small tip for you. Do not hide your governance where it will be really hard to find.”

Another important consideration the leaders took seriously to reach success was taking the time to build future teams to become a backbone after the project ended. Even after the majority of workers involved in the implementation had moved on, they worked to attract and retain some key people to keep things running smoothly after the official finish line, whilst also making sure their efforts were appreciated throughout the project.

At the time of writing, Equinor is about to go live with the SAP S/4HANA transition in January 2025, with ongoing efforts to manage remaining gaps and maintain system integrity.

Reflecting on their nearly-done and dusted transformation, the Equinor leaders demonstrated that even in seemingly complicated and multifaceted projects, by embracing the clean core philosophy, prioritizing reduced technical debt and fostering agile teamwork, they can optimize the results.

At the finish line, the team has not only modernized its ERP infrastructure but also positioned itself for long-term resilience and scalability. The project’s commitment to standardization, governance and building a sustainable team culture demonstrates that with the right vision and execution, even the most complex transitions can drive meaningful change – a guarantee of success, some would say.

The post Inside Equinor’s Next-Gen ERP project with SAP appeared first on ERP Today.

During an India visit in the eastern state of Tamil Nadu, UK minister for the Indo-Pacific region, Anne-Marie Trevelyan announced a new technology initiative aimed at improving quality of life and enhancing action on climate change.

Trevelyan launched the UK-supported Smart District project, alongside Tamil Nadu’s IT minister, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, focused on responding to global sustainability challenges by piloting the placement of sensors throughout the district to collect real-time data on water and waste management and environmental quality. The sensors will work to identify patterns and trends and help inform decisions about resource allocation and management.  

The UK minister also visited the National Institute of Ocean Technology to gain insights into India’s deep-sea programs, marine systems and vessel management while learning more about the UK’s partnership with Tamil Nadu on climate, including the Climate Compatible Growth Program, focused on supporting investment in sustainable energy and transport systems. Further discussions around the electrification of naval fleets and closer maritime security ties also took place.

Reinforcing the UK’s commitment to regional security, Trevelyan toured Indian manufacturing company Larsen and Toubro’s shipyard at the Kattuppalli suburb where last year the UK and India formed an Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership (EPCP) for industry innovation on the electrification of warships.

The EPCP project brought together expertise from the Royal Navy and UK industry with that of the Indian Navy and Larsen and Toubro.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, UK minister of state for the Indo-Pacific, said: “The UK and India are close partners, joining together our unique expertise to work towards a shared goal, increasing security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Our collaboration on a range of issues, including climate change, technology and maritime security, is crucial for addressing global challenges and building a more sustainable future for generations to come.”

The recent developments are part of the UK’s long-term commitment to the region and building up on the existing ambitions for the UK-India relationship set out in the 2030 Roadmap.

In a similar move, earlier this year, Lord Ahmad, UK minister of state for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and United Nations, visited India for a collaboration aimed at accelerating the UK-India partnership on science, technology and health, following a landmark agreement on science, research and innovation signed by the two countries.

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