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 Dean Crounse, VP of Enterprise Platforms at Fluence, 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.”
Listen to this podcast from SAP Sapphire 2025, where Crounse speaks with ERP Today’s Mark Vigoroso on Fluence’s SAP journey and how its large SAP footprint is the result of an “end-to-end orchestration—from project inception to delivery and long-term asset maintenance.”
