Cospowers: Redefining the cost management system to establish a lean operations model in the new energy industry
A unified financial and operational management framework
By adopting an SAP Cloud ERP Private solution, Cospowers integrated core business processes such as R&D, sales, procurement, budgeting, and finance. This integration optimizes the alignment of strategy, business, and systems, improving management efficiency and operational transparency and supporting the energy storage leader’s global expansion.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Oil, gas, and energy | Shandong, China | >3,000 employees |
improvement in sales-forecast accuracy.
days reduced from the product-delivery cycle.
days faster completion of operating-cost-analysis reports.
Director of the President’s Office, Head of the IT Department, Cospowers Technology Company Limited
Enabling overseas expansion and meeting IPO compliance requirements
Founded in 2019, Cospowers Technology Company Limited has rapidly emerged as a leading player in the new energy storage sector backed by a core R&D team with more than 20 years of expertise in the lithium battery storage field. Cospowers provides diversified solutions covering power storage, telecommunications storage, and residential storage to more than 60 countries and regions worldwide. As its global presence grows, Cospowers is enhancing its management system to meet IPO compliance requirements and facilitate group-level operations.
The organizational structure of renewable energy companies is often more complex than that of traditional manufacturers. On the one hand, the industry is highly sensitive to policies, with factories often built in line with policy and customer requirements, leading to a fragmented and decentralized industry. On the other hand, Chinese renewable energy companies expanded overseas early on, resulting in numerous overseas branches, which often leads to data silos. Cospowers faces a similar challenge. Since its establishment, it has rapidly expanded with three high tech enterprises, five major R&D centers, and seven smart manufacturing bases. While this multiregional, multilevel structure has fostered innovation and growth, it has also increased the complexity of coordination, decision-making, and daily management.
As competition in the energy storage market intensifies and overseas market expansion continues, Cospowers faces higher demands for cost control. With the global supply chain expanding, procurement scales are growing, and supply chains are becoming increasingly complex. Gaining real-time insights into cost structures, enhancing bargaining power, optimizing bidding processes, reducing hidden costs, and ensuring a stable raw material supply have become crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. As a result, Cospowers urgently needed an integrated, standardized, and transparent digital management platform to support global collaboration and strengthen compliance capabilities.
In 2022, Cospowers initiated its IPO preparation process, and the challenges posed by its complex organizational structure became increasingly apparent. Specifically, relying on traditional manual reporting and decentralized systems proved inadequate to meet the stringent regulatory requirements for data transparency, consistency, and traceability. Therefore, the management team urgently needed to enhance operational transparency through a standardized management system to enable the smooth progression of the IPO.
Director of the President’s Office, Head of the IT Department, Cospowers Technology Company Limited
Prioritizing top-level architecture to build a unified management platform
During its digital transformation, Cospowers implemented SAP Cloud ERP Private to establish a unified and efficient management system. Lacking a complete ERP system, Cospowers adopted a top-down approach at the group level to optimize processes. This included creating a comprehensive blueprint for all business operations, such as organizational structure adjustments and the design of specialized solutions, and gradually establishing a digital management foundation to support global operations.
The integration of subsidiaries and overseas branches and enhanced business collaboration were crucial to Cospowers’s transformation. In response to a volatile supply chain and rapidly changing demand in the energy storage sector, Cospowers used SAP Cloud ERP Private to streamline the supply chain process, improving overall responsiveness and resource coordination. This strengthened the supply chain’s resilience and agility while accelerating business transactions between sales companies, manufacturing bases, and other key entities. With the solution’s built-in sales and demand forecasting features, Cospowers optimized management across various dimensions, including annual, quarterly, and long-term material planning. This flexibility enabled effective responses to market fluctuations, supporting stable supply and optimal inventory of raw materials such as lithium iron phosphate. Additionally, Cospowers could now plan production and procurement schedules more accurately, reducing resource waste and improving inventory turnover.
As Cospowers’s overseas subsidiaries continued to grow, the increasing frequency of intercompany transfers and transactions posed challenges under the existing management model. Previously, there were widespread instances of subsidiaries borrowing goods, raw materials, fixed assets, and more from each other, complicating management as the company scaled. This led to potential discrepancies between business and financial data. The implementation of SAP Cloud ERP Private effectively addressed this issue. Using intercompany transactions within the system, Cospowers made business processes and financial data consistent. Introducing a unified reconciliation and invoicing system simplified internal transactions, significantly improving the accuracy of financial accounting. Additionally, inventory management capabilities in SAP Cloud ERP Private enhanced visibility, supporting global subsidiary collaboration and enabling smooth, standardized intercompany operations as the company expanded.
Director of the President’s Office, Head of the IT Department, Cospowers Technology Company Limited
Integrating business and finance and enabling continuous lean improvement
By deploying SAP Cloud ERP Private, Cospowers built a unified data platform for the group, achieving deep integration between strategy, business, and systems. Key processes such as sales forecasting, order management, inventory accounting, and financial settlement now operate smoothly, facilitating sharing of unified, accurate, and real-time data across the organization. SAP Cloud ERP Private also integrates with external systems spanning product lifecycle management, manufacturing execution, warehouse management, and quality management, providing real-time support for supply chain planning, inventory control, and quality management. As a result, sales forecasting accuracy has improved by 30%.
SAP Cloud ERP Private has streamlined the connection between Cospowers’s operational and financial data, automating the circulation and consolidation of actual cost data across processes, which reduces the need for manual data collection and interdepartmental verification. This has shortened the time to generate the operating-cost-analysis report from the 22nd to the 12th of each month. The manual end-of-month reconciliation process is simpler, reducing the month-end closing cycle to just five days. Consequently, business departments can more quickly understand cost trends and adjust their operational strategies accordingly.
In standard cost management, SAP Cloud ERP Private integrates master data such as materials and processes, consolidating cost elements to quickly generate product-standard cost structures. These costs are continuously benchmarked against actual costs in real time, helping Cospowers optimize production and procurement processes. As data-driven capabilities have improved, internal collaboration at Cospowers has evolved. Business departments have become more attuned to financial data, actively participating in cost optimization and fostering a culture where business understands finance and costs are jointly controlled. This collaboration has reduced product delivery cycles by more than 20 days, further enhancing the company’s operational resilience.
Only when management is grounded in a solid foundation and execution follows a clear framework can corporate reform succeed. With SAP Cloud ERP Private, Cospowers has significantly improved operational efficiency and successfully implemented lean management, establishing a lasting foundation for its global market expansion.