Image generated by Deeptech Times using ChatGPT
TCL SunPower has become the first company inside China’s TCL Group to activate SAP Joule, SAP’s GenAI copilot for cloud enterprise software. The move follows a four-month deployment of SAP GROW that gave the solar business a unified cloud ERP backbone across seven overseas entities in five countries.
The rollout is meant to do more than modernise back-office systems. TCL SunPower is using Joule to query live data on inventory, orders and financial performance in natural language, giving teams a faster way to pull operational insight from SAP systems without digging through multiple applications.
“Agility and scalability were central to this transformation,” said Eric Wang, overseas digitisation head at TCL SunPower. “We needed to complete the transition in just four months while creating a stronger operating foundation for our overseas business. With SAP GROW, we were able to adopt standard processes, reduce complexity and support our finance, supply chain, compliance and traceability needs across multiple markets.”
The company needed a separate digital foundation for seven overseas entities brought in through a recent acquisition, including manufacturing in the Philippines, sales operations in Singapore and Japan, and a regional sales operations centre in Australia. That footprint created a predictable problem for a fast-expanding global business: too many local systems, too many handovers and not enough shared data.
SAP GROW, SAP’s cloud business software programme for mid-sized and fast-growing companies, became the template for standardising those operations. With implementation partner TCL Gtrontec, TCL SunPower connected finance, supply chain, compliance and product traceability processes on a single cloud-based platform.
Wang said the “clean core” created by SAP S/4HANA was a prerequisite for business AI. “Governed, structured data is foundational for business AI; without it, enabling agents is very difficult,” he said.
The results are already showing up in finance and operations. Month-end close has fallen from one week to two days. TCL SunPower has consolidated five peripheral finance systems into one SAP-connected setup through SAP Business Technology Platform, while improving support for local reporting, e-invoicing and group-level treasury governance.
On the operations side, the company says it now has better visibility across ERP, manufacturing execution and warehouse management systems. That has improved inventory accuracy by 10 to 15 per cent, reduced manual data mapping and billing lag, and enabled end-to-end serial-number traceability for solar products across markets.
The bigger bet is that a standard template will let TCL SunPower expand without adding headcount at the same pace. “It’s about speed and scalability. We’re expanding into Southeast Asia and Africa without hiring proportionally,” Wang said. “A standardised template lets us roll out in new countries with far less pain and time.”
That also hints at where the company wants to take Joule next. Today it is a conversational assistant for surfacing business information. Over time, TCL SunPower wants more agent-driven execution, with software handling repetitive process steps and people spending more time on analysis, approvals and exceptions.
“We aren’t moving people out; we’re helping them embrace more efficient processes,” Wang said. “As agents take over steps, humans become decision makers.”
