FEMCO Steel elevates business development with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

As the world’s second-largest golf shaft manufacturing company, FEMCO Steel Technology (FST) designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes golf club iron shafts as well as carbon fiber shafts. It also supplies the top golf club OEM companies and distributors.

To lay the foundation for sustainable growth without over-expanding, FST implemented Oracle Cloud ERP a few years ago to handle orders, inventories, and balance sheets.

The company’s  private brand, KBS, also serves many customers around the world. As the business grew, FST’s legacy systems could not handle huge amounts of customer data, such as buying habits or purchase attributes, let alone offer fast and effective analysis.

In addition, FST had to meet regulatory compliance in Taiwan regarding data security. In order to simplify maintenance and allow the small IT team to focus on the most important tasks, the company turned to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Analytics Cloud to enhance financial and sales reporting.

Company Chairman Chuang Yu-Lung, a longtime Oracle user, found Oracle products very reliable. Given that FST already adopted Oracle Cloud ERP, and Oracle Consulting offered an attractive package solution, Oracle Cloud stood out in the selection process. Ultimately, FST decided to implement Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Analytics Cloud.

FEMCO Steel Technology chose Oracle Autonomous Database on OCI to eliminate many complex administrative activities such data integration, database patching, and tuning. Combined with the easy-to-use Oracle Analytics Cloud data visualization tools and dashboards for reporting, business users can access secure, real-time reporting for better decision-making.

The company also chose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to implement disaster recovery to help ensure data security. Oracle Autonomous Database is automatically backed up so that FST no longer has to worry about important business data being damaged by disasters, such as earthquakes. With OCI, server operation and hardware maintenance are all taken care of by the Oracle team, bolstering IT staff efficiency.

Oracle’s premium service and engagement provided the services and products that FST wanted. Thanks to the highly standardized module and cloud development platform of OCI, the implementation of Autonomous Database and Oracle Analytics was seamless and faster than any competitors in the market. “The implementation can normally take up to six months, but Oracle Consulting was able to complete it in two months,” says Chuang.

After adopting OCI’s Autonomous Database and Analytics Cloud, FST branch offices in the US and Japan can concurrently access data on the same platform. All data can be synchronized, helping decision-makers with fast strategy analysis that brings value to the company. Self-encryption from the autonomous database enhanced data security, which concurrently shortens onsite IT maintenance time without worrying about data errors, leading to savings in costs.

Adopting Oracle Analytics allowed FST to accurately analyze a vast amount of data in a short time. While the reports have to go through the sales, finance and IT departments, having analytical capabilities allows FST to clarify new product development directions both domestically and internationally.

As a multinational enterprise, FST can now excute and remotely manage global business on the go. For example, the company chairman can access data at his fingertips to make effective decisions when he is traveling anywhere in the world. Other business users can also quickly determine which region needs which products, including which products should be repalced or adjusted.

Customization is one of FST's advantages. For example, there are more than 2,000 types of club shafts in the factory. Oracle Autonomous Database collects historical data from Oracle Cloud ERP and then does calculations that Oracle Analytics analyzes. Making the best use of this Oracle solution can greatly reduce the risk caused by unsalable inventory, paving the way for better business operations and revenue performance in the long run.

In the future, FST plans to extend its AI and data science capabilities available in the current solution for big data analysis, so that it can  offer its customers more personalized services and premium products. At the same time, through system expansion, FST can make factories smarter to develop and manufacture new products more efficiently.

FEMCO Steel Technology worked with  Oracle Consulting to implement the project. Under normal circumstances, the project could have taken from 6 months to a year, but the team was able to complete it in just two months. Oracle Consulting had a package solution for Oracle Analytics and Autonomous Database. The team’s preparation and organization helped make the project a success.