Supply Chain Transformation for a Global Energy Company
Saving $1million per year in licensing costs using a cloud-first approach

The client

The client is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly specializing in oil and gas that combines upstream, midstream, downstream together. Within oil and gas, the client is vertically integrated and is involved in hydrocarbon exploration, production, refining, marketing and transport, chemicals manufacturing and sales, and power generation.

They needed supply chain digitalization and modernization to overcome the limitations of their manual processes that lacked reporting capabilities and hindered their ability to handle bulk imports. They partnered with LTIMindtree for a digital transformation of their supply chain.

Overview

The client worked in two phases in the digital transformation of their supply chain. The first phase of digitalization advanced them from an entire manual process; subsequently modernization to the cloud to overcome various operation and cost challenges.

Digitalization
Supply chain is a very integral part of the client’s E&U function, but the business processes were manually managed. All stock authorization requests were manually approved without any automated notification to the requestor on approval. The client’s system was unable to handle bulk imports and updates of the materials that led to manual entry of each request. Lack of reporting capabilities meant there was no dashboard view of different requests and their respective states.

Modernization
Outsystems is a low code development platform which is used in multiple applications under different business functions (Surface, SCM, Subsurface, etc.) but it has an underlying licensing cost. After digitalization using Outsystems, the client decided to shift to a cloud-based platform to save licensing costs and also transform their supply chain management using a more reliable and sustainable solution.

The need for supply chain digitalization and modernization

The shift towards supply chain digitalization and modernization is being driven by several key industry trends that aim to address ongoing challenges in efficiency, visibility, and responsiveness. Firstly, forecasting and planning of material movements need to be more accurate necessitating digital tools that provide better visibility and use advanced analytics to predict demand and optimize inventory levels in real-time, helping companies respond to market fluctuations more effectively. Additionally, the execution of material movements is increasingly managed through centralized digital platforms that offer a single point for tracking goods, from procurement to delivery, enhancing transparency, reducing errors, and enabling real-time status updates. This level of integration allows businesses to improve performance tracking by continuously analyzing key metrics across the supply chain to identify opportunities for optimization.

Finally, operational efficiencies are realized by leveraging data-driven improvements, where transparency and analytics provide actionable insights that help streamline processes, reduce waste, and increase overall productivity. These industry trends are driving companies to build more resilient, agile, and cost-effective supply chains by adopting digital and cloud technology, ultimately meeting customer demands while minimizing risk and resource wastage.

Supply chain is often the last mile of digitalization in the oil and gas, manufacturing and engineering industries. Supply chain management is typically heavily ERP dependent, and organizations often face challenges in implementing a digital transformation solution that integrates with their ERP landscape. However, LTIMindtree’s solutions offer seamless integration with any ERP landscape and digitalization and modernization of the supply chain has tremendous opportunities for cost savings and improving operational efficiency.

Challenges

Digitalization

Manual process: A high user error rate in the manual stock authorization process through SharePoint Excel.
No automated notifications: No provision for automated notifications resulting in late updates.
No bulk import: Bulk import option was not available for bulk creation or updation of request material items.
No reporting capability: Reporting was unavailable and there were no dashboards or holistic view of all the requests created, reviewed and approved.

Modernization

High licensing cost: Outsystems license cost was an extra cost the client wanted to eliminate.
Diverse tech stack: The tech stack was very diverse due to Outsystems dependencies. The client needed a uniform stack including Microsoft .Net, Azure, etc. for web applications, for compliance with standards that evolved after the initial digitalization solution.
Costly operational support: Dependency on Outsystems vendor for ongoing product and config support related to run and maintenance was time-consuming and increased opex costs.
Tedious operational maintenance: Third-party accessibility to Outsystems logging and monitoring lacked visibility. Requests raised to the vendor often entailed a wait time for a response.
Difficulty scaling: Application UI scalability was tied to the application objects and it lacked economy of scaling.

LTIMindtree’s solution

Digitalization: Building of Stock Authorization Request (SAR)

To remove manual dependency and make their supply chain processes digital, we developed an Outsystems-based solution with the following capabilities:

SAR is a global tool that BUs could use outside of ERPs to complete the workflows that were
previously manual. It provided a single process for managing add/change spare requests to global exploration and production teams.
Users could view the status of their SAR items and track the lifecycle for individual items.
Visibility of SAR status and progress for everyone with timestamps for every action applied in the SAR.
Generating various reports such as SAR volume per BU, open requests–requests on which no action had been taken so far, etc. was easier and more accurate.
Intelligent ticket platform reduced a requestor’s efforts and time in submitting a SAR (i.e., restrictions in material master values to be selected/entered based on specific criteria–BU of requestor, indirect or direct material, stock or non-stock, etc.).
The platform could store documents or datasheets that were used as references in creating the material descriptions.
The MMS tool allowed the easiest coordination between stakeholders and GSS because of the visibility of the SAR statuses.

Modernization: Building of eSAR

The next step after digitalization was to modernize the client’s system in alignment with their cloud-first strategy and digital architecture standards for Azure due to their new strategic partnership with Microsoft. We developed eSAR which was completely electronic, eliminating the need for any manual paperwork in the request.

For a modernized solution without any Outsystems dependency, we used Microsoft tech stack with Microsoft Azure .Net after various POCs for a compatibility check based on a design-thinking approach.
The entire application was re-written in Microsoft tech stack to comply with client standards.
Key features of the cloud-based solution:
- Azure Active directory with Microsoft Entra ID-based identity and access management service
- SSO based logins
- Rest API architecture to have asynchronous data transfer calls
- APIM integration to get the SAP data and achieve seamless integration
- Azure function-based email notification
- Application insights for logs, exception, trace front-end and backend API request tracing
- Azure Blob storage used to store static content like images, files related to application
- Azure SQL DB for application transactional data

Infographics

Tech Stack

Digitalization

Outsystems, SQL Database Server

Modernization

Backend technologies	.NET 6/7, ASP.NET Core Web API, Web Job
Front-end technologies	Angular 14+, Kendo UI, Angular, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, Type Script, Javascript, Jquery
Database	SQL Server
Cloud resources	Web app, Azure SQL, Key vault, App insights, Azure Active Directory, Blob storage
DevOps	CI/CD pipelines, Azure DevOps

Benefits

Digitalization benefits led to process and resource efficiency
LTIMindtree’s supply chain digitalization solution for the client led to several operational benefits by taking them from manual processes to automated and streamlined digital processes. It:

Enabled request approval flow for stock authorization requests eliminating manual approval through Excel on SharePoint.
Ensured timely updates through email notification once a request was raised and in subsequent reviewal and approval phases.
Provided a bulk import Excel template for bulk creation or updation of request material items.
Exported Excel reports for comprehensive reporting on all requests created, reviewed and approved with a filter capability to analyze these requests for different criteria.
Provided a single source of information reducing churn and inefficiencies.
Enabled real-time decision support for supply chain management (SCM) and assets.
Improved resource planning for movement of materials through forecasting of upcoming demand.
Enabled stronger analytics using supply chain data to understand operational performance, effectively report on business outcomes and identify process improvement opportunities.

Modernization benefits led to cost-efficiency and scalability
The cloud-based solution also modernized the client’s supply chain after the digitalization phase and this:

Enabled cost savings of ~$1 million per year with regard to Outsystems licensing costs.
Led to 30% reduction in efforts due to client-owned and managed source code.
Provided scalability, reliability, backup and recovery, logging and security.
Enabled 2x faster UI development through reusability of code.
Enabled optimization by provisioning “on-demand” sync of SAP data for stock authorization. Eliminated ~12 hours of wait time to request new material through stock authorization requests (SARs) in the eSAR application.
Enabled scalability for other BUs with minimal configurations.

Conclusion

Our supply chain digitalization and modernization for the global energy company took them from entirely manual to digital processes and subsequently to the cloud. This resulted in significant cost savings of one million dollars per year in licensing fees, marking a major milestone in operational efficiency and financial optimization. Although this project was a two-phased approach as the client’s requirements evolved, we can empower organizations with a direct cloud-first approach for digitalization and modernization of their supply chain. Such a transition to a centralized, cloud-based solution enabled streamlining of processes, reduced redundancies, improved visibility, eliminated fragmented, siloed processes and enhanced scalability. Moreover, there is tremendous scope for cloud-driven digital transformation of supply chain across industries as supply chain has predominantly been a manual process regardless of industry. By adopting digital tools and cloud-based technology for supply chain management, the company is better equipped to make timely, data-driven decisions, improve operational resilience, adapt to market dynamics and drive cost-saving innovations for sustainable success as a leader in the energy sector.

Testimonial

Product Line Manager, Material Management and Logistics

Thank you to the team, this is a great accomplishment and step forward in terms of what we can deliver both in digital and as a support function. Outstanding work by all and looking forward to the possibilities this opens for us!
– Product Line Manager, Material Management and Logistics

Modernization SCRUM Lead, Supply Chain

We want to thank the LTIMindtree team for their dedication in the entire program. With their technical expertise, the team was able to deliver a quality application on schedule. We wish we can work with you again in the future. Keep up the good work! Kudos!
– Modernization SCRUM Lead, Supply Chain

Contact Us

Looking to digitally transform your supply chain with a cloud-first approach?
Reach out to us at eugene.comms@ltimindtree.com

Contact us

Supply Chain Transformation for a Global Energy Company