How Oracle powers a carbon platform and supercharges its cloud operations

ESG reporting might have become a huge thing only recently, but the founders of carbon platform MVGX Tech saw this development coming a mile away.

“Five years ago, we foresaw two major trends that would take place in financial services: digitalization and greater sustainability,” says Gabriel Wong, one of MVGX Tech’s co-founders. “We knew they would have a tremendous impact on financial reporting, and we’ve been proven correct.”

Gabriel Wong, co-founder of MVGX Tech / Photo credit: MVGX Tech

For instance, the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will affect companies reporting for the 2024 financial year, requiring them to disclose information according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards.

As such, Wong and his co-founders launched MVGX Tech in 2018 to help firms solve their ESG reporting needs.

Using data for good

Much of MVGX Tech’s solution revolves around its clients’ daily activities. Using an online platform, companies can upload their operational information or integrate MVGX Tech’s software into their own enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The firm’s platform then uses its clients’ data to help them calculate their carbon footprint as well as their Scope 3 emissions.

This data is then uploaded to a blockchain operated by MVGX Tech, providing a layer of transparency that combats potential greenwashing.

“As the green wave gets bigger, there’s also a greater need to accurately measure carbon emissions based on a global standard, just like how we have standards in financial accounting,” Wong says.

That said, while the team at MVGX Tech always had a clear goal for its tech and business model, Wong admits that there were several considerations that it had to take into account regarding its infrastructure and operational processes, some of which could have been “make or break” for the firm during its early days.

Growing pains

According to Wong, MVGX Tech’s products are offered through a cloud-based SaaS model. Therefore, it was important that the infrastructure it used was not just stable and scalable, but could also ensure data security of the highest order – the information that companies provide to track their carbon credits is highly confidential, as it’s often generated from their day-to-day operations.

“If there were some malicious actors that were smart enough, they could reverse engineer some of the information that companies submitted through our platform and get an intimate understanding of those businesses,” Wong points out.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

The issue of stability is self-evident – no one wants to use a platform that keeps breaking down, especially if it handles a large amount of your firm’s operational data.

“If our system just shuts down without warning, it would be a nightmare,” he says. It also had to be “reasonable in cost,” given that MVGX Tech is still a fledgling company.

The startup also needed to ensure that it could automate financial reporting to improve operational efficiency as well as ensure data accuracy and accessibility for investors. As the company grew, so did the volume of data it created, and its finance team became increasingly overwhelmed with manual data entry and spreadsheet management.

“It was prone to errors and just very time-consuming,” Wong shares. He adds that simply cobbling together a financial report could take up to two weeks.

With these considerations in mind, the firm was on the lookout for a new tech provider that would better meet its needs – and that’s where Oracle came in.

A chance and a dream

MVGX Tech first chanced upon the cloud systems provider around two years ago in what Wong described as a “very fortuitous meeting.”

“One of the other co-founders connected with one of Oracle’s senior executives for Asia Pacific, and we found out that at the time, Oracle was dipping its toes in the carbon solutions and ESG space,” he says.

Oracle was looking to add an end-to-end ESG solution to its existing financial ERP offering, NetSuite, by finding new partners. The firm believed that MVGX Tech’s product would complement NetSuite well, which marked the start of a strategic collaboration.

The benefits for both companies were clear. For Oracle, it now had several carbon measurement solutions that it could offer to its own clients. Meanwhile, MVGX Tech is able to use NetSuite’s integrated cloud system to centralize data to improve business visibility, automate financial processes to improve productivity, and scale to support global growth.

With NetSuite on board, the startup managed to reduce its time spent on monthly reporting by nearly 50%.

Photo credit: gmast3r

“It accommodates for the complexity of our business but makes it extremely easy to pull and read data,” says Wong. “Dealing with investors requires a lot of questions for due diligence, particularly on our financials. Oracle NetSuite has made that process a lot less painful.”

On the cloud infrastructure and data security front, Wong says that Oracle was the exact platform the startup needed, meeting key considerations.

“We’ve used Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) a lot, including some of their tools for data encryption and data security as well as some coding for our back-end infrastructure, to build up our platform,” he explains. “Because it started off as a database management company, its capabilities in those areas are very strong.”

Further, getting access to each other’s platforms helped MVGX Tech save capital that could be used to expand the company even further.

“OCI became like an all-in-one data management solution for us, all while offering a lower total cost of ownership,” Wong shares.

It also didn’t hurt that being associated with a brand name like Oracle was a huge advantage in landing projects.

“To win government tenders, you often need a certain track record or brand name,” Wong explains. “Smaller startups like us may not satisfy all those requirements, but by tying up with Oracle, it’s become so much easier for us.”

“Having Oracle as a partner probably gave us additional access to markets and channels that would have been challenging to get ourselves,” he adds.

Taking it overseas

After the last two years of working closely with Oracle, Wong says that his team has been “very happy.”

“I hope they’re happy with us too,” he adds with a laugh.

For now, MVGX Tech’s next plan of action – with the help of Oracle – is to enter new markets and deepen its presence in existing ones. To that end, the collaboration could prove invaluable.

“We have a very clear plan of action,” Wong says. “Some countries have strict requirements in terms of data security and sovereignty, and Oracle has been a crucial partner in helping us meet those requirements as we roll out in new markets.”

Oracle is one of the largest software providers in the world, offering a range of solutions including databases and cloud infrastructure. To learn more about how its solutions can supercharge your operations, visit its site.

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