Amid the wave of digital transformation in Southeast Asia's agricultural sector, Thailand, as a core agricultural economy in the region, sees its agricultural output value accounting for over 10% of GDP annually, directly or indirectly supporting nearly half of the population's employment. The modernization of its agriculture is crucial to national economic stability. In recent years, global climate change, intensifying market competition, and farmers' demands for improved efficiency have driven Thailand's agriculture to shift from "experience-based farming" to "data-driven farming". Against this backdrop, the SAP Cloud ERP cooperation project between Sotus International Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sotus"), a leading Thai agrochemical enterprise, and NTT DATA Business Solutions (Thailand) Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "NTT DATA") has emerged as an industry benchmark for digital transformation. It not only addresses Sotus' developmental bottlenecks but also empowers the upgrading of Thailand's agricultural ecosystem through data innovation.

Since its establishment in 1996, Sotus has been deeply engaged in the crop protection and nutrition sector for three decades. Leveraging its in-depth understanding of local agriculture, the company has developed a full-chain solution portfolio. Its service network covers major agricultural regions in Thailand, supporting millions of farmers in increasing crop yields and improving soil health. With annual revenue exceeding 1 billion Thai baht, Sotus has expanded its product line to over 100 varieties, with the number of served farmers growing by 15% annually. As a key player in Thailand's agrochemical industry, Sotus' development trajectory reflects the transition of local enterprises from scale expansion to quality improvement. However, with rapid growth, bottlenecks in its existing information system have become increasingly prominent.

This pain point is prevalent in Thailand's agrochemical industry. According to a 2023 report by the industry association, over 60% of local medium-sized agrochemical enterprises still use ERP systems that have been in service for more than 8 years, suffering from prominent issues such as poor compatibility and inefficient data flow. Sotus' previous on-premise SAP ERP system had been in operation for a decade. While it supported the company's growth from tens of millions to billions in revenue in its early stages, it struggled to adapt to complex operational needs: On the R&D front, product development, which typically takes 3-5 years, requires accumulating tens of thousands of data sets and passing nearly 100 indicator audits by the agricultural authorities. The outdated system's localized data storage caused delayed data synchronization, prolonging R&D cycles by 20%; On the production front, Thailand's diverse terrain gave rise to customized demands. The old system's fixed templates required manual repeated entry of parameters for each formula adjustment, resulting in a 7-day lead time for customized orders, far failing to meet market needs; On the warehousing front, Sotus operates 5 regional warehouses, but their management systems were independent from sales and production systems. Manual data entry led to lagging inventory updates, causing imbalances—such as overstock of a herbicide at the northern warehouse for over 3 months while the northeastern warehouse lost orders due to stockouts. In 2023 alone, improper inventory management caused direct losses of nearly 5 million Thai baht. These pain points forced Sotus to recognize digital transformation as a "must-do" and urgently need an integrated cloud ERP platform to break through bottlenecks.

After a six-month selection process, Sotus finally partnered with NTT DATA to implement SAP Cloud ERP. This decision was based on both technical adaptability and industry experience: SAP Cloud ERP, built on a cloud-native architecture, offers flexible scalability and holds ISO27001 information security certification, meeting the high security requirements for R&D and customer data in the agrochemical industry. It has also served industry giants like Bayer and Syngenta globally, accumulating rich industry adaptation experience; As SAP's global diamond-level partner, NTT DATA has 15 years of implementation experience in Thailand. Its team includes both SAP-certified experts and consultants with agrochemical industry backgrounds, enabling it to accurately understand Sotus' business needs and provide customized solutions tailored to local policy environments. The two parties formed a 20-member special team, formulating a "phased migration and full-process adaptation" strategy: In the early stage, the team spent three months mapping 23 core business scenarios and developing customized solutions for six key modules, adding 8 exclusive functions to the R&D module; During implementation, a "pilot-then-promote" approach was adopted—first validating the system at Bangkok headquarters and surrounding warehouses, completing a decade of data migration and company-wide training, then expanding to all regional branches to ensure uninterrupted operations; After launch, NTT DATA provided six months of on-site operation and maintenance services with 24-hour response, controlling problem resolution time within 4 hours.

This transformation is more than a technical upgrade; it also embodies Sotus' vision for intelligence. Sotus' president stated: "The core competitiveness of future agrochemical enterprises lies in intelligence. AI will act as a 'crop doctor', enabling disease diagnosis and precise services through data." SAP Cloud ERP has precisely laid the data foundation: the system integrates multi-dimensional data including farmer services, R&D, and field trials, providing high-quality samples for AI models; its real-time analytics capability allows R&D teams to quickly grasp disease patterns and sales teams to accurately match farmer needs. The Managing Director of SAP Indochina noted that the system's scalability and integration are the core supports for Sotus' sustainable expansion, and its value has been intuitively reflected in operational data.

Six months after the system went live, Sotus' key performance indicators improved significantly: Warehouse operation accuracy rose from 78% to 95%, inbound and outbound efficiency increased by 40%, and inventory turnover improved by 35%; Real-time monitoring and fault early warning were realized for production equipment, reducing maintenance response time from 48 hours to 12 hours, improving efficiency by 75% and cutting downtime by 60%; Cross-department approval time was shortened by 50%, order delivery cycle reduced from 15 days to 8 days, and overall process improvement reached 70%. The effectiveness of data-driven decision-making was prominent—by analyzing the correlation between rainy season data and corn rust in northeastern Thailand, Sotus launched a targeted fungicide three months in advance, quickly capturing 30% of the market share.

As the first agrochemical enterprise in Thailand to implement SAP Cloud ERP, Sotus' practice sets a benchmark. It has not only built dual advantages of "data-driven decision-making and efficiency leadership" but also generated industry-wide ripple effects: Three local enterprises including Green Agri (specializing in fruit pesticides) and Thai Bio (focusing on organic fertilizers) have visited Sotus for study and plan to launch transformation in 2024; Sotus developed a mobile platform based on the system, enabling over 20,000 farmers to obtain customized solutions within 30 minutes. According to user feedback, farming efficiency increased by 15% and agricultural input waste decreased by 20% after using the platform. Thailand's Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives highly recognized the project, incorporating its experience into the "Smart Agriculture 2030" plan guideline for industry-wide promotion.

Sotus' transformation offers three key insights for Southeast Asian agrochemical enterprises: First, digitalization should be "business-driven rather than technology-driven"—only by focusing on core pain points can technology truly deliver value; Second, high-quality partners can reduce transformation risks; Third, transformation requires management attention and full-staff participation. Currently, Sotus has launched its next-phase plan, aiming to integrate IoT and AI with SAP Cloud ERP: deploying field sensors for automatic R&D data collection, developing AI diagnosis models to increase disease identification accuracy to over 90%, and building an agricultural product traceability system through blockchain.

In the process of agricultural modernization, cloud ERP has become the "infrastructure" for digital transformation. Its value goes far beyond internal operational optimization, but more importantly, lies in building an industrial ecosystem. The "enterprise transformation - industrial chain collaboration - farmer benefit" model created by Sotus is driving Thailand's agriculture from scale growth to quality improvement, injecting sustained momentum into the intelligent upgrading of the regional agricultural ecosystem and helping Thailand accelerate its transition from an agricultural power to a strong agricultural nation.