Sobono Group Increased Their Profits by +87% with ScaleOcean

Many ERP providers can claim that they have an extensive list of clients, but not many have the track record to prove it. At ScaleOcean, we don’t see them as “clients” or “customers”, but rather as partners.

One such partner is Sobono Group, which has been working alongside ScaleOcean for 7 years. As a result of their partnership, Sobono has seen an +87% increase in profitability. Find out how ScaleOcean accelerated their impact!

Key Takeaways

• Sobono Group is a prominent bioenergy company in Southeast Asia that has been a partner of ScaleOcean for 7 years.
• The reason said group chose ScaleOcean is the latter’s core philosophy; being a long-term business partner rather than just an ERP provider.
• By establishing this partnership, the company experienced rapid growth; achieving an +87% increase in profitability and the automation of over 10.000 request orders every month.
• ScaleOcean’s role was that of a solid foundation for Sobono Group’s rocketing pace, allowing them to focus on core business operations rather than day-to-day administration.

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1. A Bit More on Sobono Group

Sobono Group is a holding company founded in 2007 under the name of Sobono Energy Pte Ltd (SEPL). As its name suggests, they operate within the green / bioenergy sector across Southeast Asia, which is heavily regulated both locally and globally.

In 2018, the group founded Sobono Greenland Pte Ltd, their critical bioresource management arm. 6 years later, they incorporated Sobono Bioenergy Pte Ltd and RExus Bioenergy Pte Ltd, officially expanding their operations to bioenergy.

Sobono Group’s expansion into the bioenergy sector reflected a well-planned business direction. As the company entered new operational areas, management saw the need for stronger coordination across inventory, distribution, finance, and project activities.

2. The Challenges Sobono Group Faced

The aforementioned developments created new requirements that had to be managed with greater visibility. To support its growing operations, Sobono Group required a more integrated system that could align teams, data, and workflows more effectively.

As Sobono Group’s operations became more diverse, its inventory requirements also became more dynamic. The company had to manage new SKUs, additional materials, and higher stock volumes across different business activities.

This made inventory planning more complex and required stronger visibility across stock movement. With better coordination, teams could maintain more balanced stock levels and respond faster to changing operational needs.

Alongside inventory growth, delivery coordination also became increasingly important. Project teams needed to ensure that materials arrived at the right time, in the right quantity, and according to actual site requirements.

As project timelines became more demanding, delivery schedules needed to be synchronized closely with procurement and inventory data. This helped support smoother fulfillment and more reliable project execution.

A broader scale of operations naturally brought a higher volume of transactions. This made financial visibility an important factor in helping the company track spending across projects, departments, and operational activities.

Sobono Group needed clearer access to expenditure data to support budget control and cost monitoring. With more structured insights, management could make faster and more informed financial decisions.

As operations became more interconnected, project progress tracking required a more integrated approach. Teams needed real-time visibility across inventory, finance, procurement, and project execution.

All these challenges led Sobono Group to begin considering the implementation of an ERP solution that could support EPC-style coordination. The system must be able to connect key business processes and support the company’s continued growth.

3. Why Sobono Group Chose ScaleOcean

What Sobono Group desired was not just an ERP software, they wanted one that would act as a team member, a partner. This proved to be difficult as the majority of ERP providers on the market were just that, providers.

After a long search, they ultimately decided to implement the ERP solution provided by ScaleOcean. The reasoning behind this decision can best be summarized by Jason Teoh, General Manager of Sobono Energy:

“ScaleOcean listens. They customized their tools to fit our unique workflows, allowing us to focus on expanding our impact rather than managing tech issues.”.

– Jason Teoh, General Manager of Sobono Energy

This collaborative process allowed Sobono Group to stay involved from the design to implementation stage. As a result, the ERP system was built around the company’s actual operational needs, making adoption smoother across different teams and departments.

Beyond serving as a reliable technology partner, ScaleOcean’s ERP was specifically configured to support Sobono Group’s growing business processes. The system helped integrate multiple functions, including inventory, procurement, finance, and project management, into one platform.

This integration became crucial as the group’s projects expanded in both complexity and volume. With a centralized approach, the company experienced increased visibility, more coordinated activities, and better decision-making across its operations.

In choosing ScaleOcean, Sobono Group gained more than an ERP system. It gained a scalable digital foundation that could support its expansion, strengthen operational control, and help its teams focus more on delivering sustainable impact.

4. What Changed After ScaleOcean ERP?

Ever since they implemented ScaleOcean’s customized ERP software, Sobono Group has experienced efficiency increases across the board. Namely, +87% increased profitability, 150+ more projects weekly, thousands of request orders, and automatic reports in seconds:

a. +87% Increase in Profitability

During the initial consultation process, the implementation team identified that Sobono Group was having difficulty in monitoring their costs. Actual outflows often surpassed the set budgets for numerous projects

With this information in hand, ScaleOcean then equipped the final system with budget monitoring and tracking features in mind. It enabled teams to monitor their spending in real-time, and allowed management to oversee budget compliance from one platform.

Whenever spending does surpass the set budget, the system would automatically notify all PICs and stakeholders involved. This set of financial features quickly eliminated expense ambiguity, ultimately leading to an +87% increase in profitability.

b. 150+ New Projects Every Week

Rather than separating procurement, inventory management, and progress tracking, ScaleOcean consolidated all processes related to a project under one umbrella. This greatly improved overall efficiency, allowing them to run more projects simultaneously.

Their procurement processes became faster, equipped with real-time visibility on the current state of materials. ScaleOcean ERP also enables automated purchasing when the existing stock reaches a certain level, ensuring that the need of every project is met.

c. 10.000+ Request Orders Every Month

In relation to the statement above, the automatically scheduled purchases resulted in an increase in the number of requests made every month. It was only after ScaleOcean did they realize their monumental operation scale – over 10.000 request orders generated by the system every month.

d. 10-Seconds Financial Reports

With an increase in costs, budgets, and of course, sales volume, drafting accurate financial reports became increasingly crucial for clarity, yet also incredibly arduous and long. Sobono Group could not justify spending days-to-weeks on end for one administrative process.

Knowing this, the ScaleOcean team equipped their custom ERP software with a suite of accounting features. From automatic accurate budget forecasting to real-time expense tracking; what once would take them weeks, now takes them only 10 seconds.

5. How ScaleOcean Accelerated Sobono Group’s Impact

“Leading in clean energy means always moving forward, embracing new tech, entering new places, and tackling new challenges. With ScaleOcean, we’re focused on the future. Optimizing operations, increasing impact, and building a greener Southeast Asia.”

– Oh Wee Khoon, Founder & Managing Director of Sobono Group

Over the last 7 years, ScaleOcean has served not just as a technology vendor to Sobono Group, but also as its long-term reliable partner. ScaleOcean supports them through every step of the way, from implementation to on-going growth.

Prior to implementation, Sobono Group was a visionary with a goal; becoming a major bioenergy player in Southeast Asia. They were ready to scale to the next level, they just lacked one critical component – a concrete foundation for growth.

ScaleOcean served as that very foundation. Prior to our partnership, every process was mired in uncertainty and zero clarity: Are the deliveries on track? Is it within the budget? Where did this cost come from? Will this project finish on time? Such questions were commonplace.

Sobono Group came to ScaleOcean with those very bottlenecks, and the rest was history. Deliveries became more structured, budget compliance is no longer a point of concern, and deadlines were met in every single project.

Fast-forward to the present time, Sobono Group’s growth has been monumental. In 2024, they, through RExus Bioenergy, secured a green loan from DBS to finance the construction of a biomass powerplant, according to Bioenergy Magazine.

Not only that, they also secured a 10-year purchase agreement with electricity retailer PacificLight Energy and Google. The green electricity generated by the new powerplant will be used to power Google’s data centre operations in Singapore.

These achievements show that the future of Sobono Group is brighter and greener than ever. Naturally, this also means more challenges and complexities, yet they can rest easy since their partner ScaleOcean is always ready to accelerate their impact at every step of the way.

6. In Conclusion: ScaleOcean as Both an ERP Provider and Business Partner

Sobono Group’s journey is a classic melancholic tale of every business; as their business grew, so did the complexities. They knew they needed an ERP solution to streamline their operations, but not many providers managed to give them a concrete answer for “Why You?”.

Ultimately, they found their answer in ScaleOcean throughout the free demo process. They saw that their team truly listened to their business challenges and presented plausible solutions to them that optimized every single one of their operations.

“It is a partnership we can rely on for years.”

– Neo Wen Yang, Project Manager of Sobono Energy

In their mission to find a software provider, they came across something bigger – a business partner. This sentiment is not limited to just Sobono Group, but every single one of ScaleOcean’s clients.

If your business is facing similar challenges Sobono Group once faced or are looking to scale to the next level, then ScaleOcean ERP may be the answer for you. We are not just a software provider, we are partners for unlimited growth and impact.