KUALA LUMPUR: Enterprise software company Oracle Corp is eyeing a new market segment to target its offerings at.

Seeing an increasing demand for clean energy resources like wind and solar power in the future, the company will offer its products and services to help this industry manage supply chains.

Jasbir Singh, general manager for application sales (Asean) at Oracle Corp Asia-Pacific, said this industry is expected to grow dramatically as governments encourage the use of cleaner energy in the wake of rising environmental concerns.

“Governments in Europe are providing incentives to companies that opt for clean energy,” he told In.Tech at the Oracle Malaysia office in Kuala Lumpur recently.

And European countries have invested about US$72bil (RM252tril) in clean energy initiatives, he said.

These incentives, he said, would lead to a higher demand in solar panels so there will be more companies manufacturing the product.

The Malaysian Government is also supporting foreign companies that use and manufacture solar panels. “Solar panel manufacturers are starting to set up companies in this country,” Jasbir said.

He said that just like other manufacturers, those in the solar panel industry will need an IT infrastructure that can consolidate and manage supply chains effectively.

Various points

“Instead of just focusing on the main manufacturing plant, Oracle also wants to reach out to suppliers, like the company that makes the chemicals for these solar panels,” Jasbir said.

Apart from the staple CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, Oracle will put more focus on two unique needs of this sector — demand planning and intellectual property protection.

Jasbir said solar-panel making is different from other manufacturing tasks and Oracle plans to cater for these differences using technologies it has helped develop in conjuntion with companies that it has acquired throughout the years.

The first difference Oracle plans to have solar panel manufacturers tackle is the unpredictable process of producing a solar panel. “Manufacturers are unsure of the quality of the unfinished product until it reaches the end of the assembly line,” he said.

This forces manufacturers to predict the outcomes and estimate the number of solar panels they can produce. “When there’s a discrepancy, manufacturers have to readjust their expectations,” Jasbir said.

Oracle plans to tackle this problem through its demand-planning software, Demantra. This can help forecast the supply of solar panels according to type or quality.

“It will help solar-panel manufacturers with stock keeping exercises involving the types of solar panels in their inventory,” he said.

Since it is also a fairly new industry, solar-panel manufacturers are trying hard to protect their intellectual properties.

“This is a fairly new industry and IP is a critical issue,” Jasbir said. He said an Oracle solution that can help companies safeguard their IPs is available from its acquisition of product lifecycle solutions provider Agile Software Corp.

This solution, he said, will help manufacturers manage the design ideas of their solar panels, right down to their marketing plans for it.

Jasbir believes these two solutions can help solar panel manufacturers manage their whole supply chain.

For more product information, go to www.oracle.com.