Guest post by Oluwafisayo Ige. Contact us if you’d like to contribute as well.
The oil and gas industry may be known for big revenues, but it is also an incredibly unpredictable and volatile industry – certainly not a place for the meek. This already says something about Marine Platforms Limited (MPL), a service company for the oil and gas industries of Nigeria and West Africa.
Established in 2001, Marine Platforms provide essential support services and products to the major oil and gas operators. More specifically, Marine Platforms focuses on delivering upstream services such as sub-sea solutions (including diving, repairs and maintenance), vessel chartering and a variety of drilling and completions services. Being able to provide engineering, project management, skilled personnel and assets for safe and timely delivery of projects from conception to completion, has positioned Marine Platforms as a critical business partner to its clients.
In an asset-intensive and costly environment such as the oil and gas industry, production downtime can equate to hundreds of thousands of lost dollars per day. Ensuring that production machinery and other critical equipment downtime is minimized not only reduces operating and maintenance costs, but also increases production revenue. In addition to this, the oil and gas environment often involves heavy equipment, hazardous materials, high temperatures and high pressure equipment, again stressing the necessity for operators to partner with a reliable service provider like Marine Platforms.
From the onset, the goal for Marine Platforms was to become one of Nigeria’s best oil and gas services companies, a position it quickly claimed as the company established itself as a reliable and internationally-competent entity. With a focus on a client- and service-centric model, MPL has become one of the industry’s fastest-growing service companies, boasting an annual turnover in excess of $100-million. It has forged a strong reputation among oil and gas giants, counting companies such as Shell and Chevron as clients.
With such ambitious business plans to execute on, Marine Platforms partnered with SAP to ensure that the technology that supports the business is not only world-class, but will also support the growth in complexity that business expansion brings to the fore.
“MPL had to work long and hard to build a reputation within the industry,” said Francis Akintunde, Document Controller and Project Officer at MPL. “Nigeria is known for its oil output, but the supporting services are far less developed. Though that did help create good opportunities for MPL at the start, it was a lot harder to convince the international industry of our worth. It took serious and focused strategies, anchored to uncompromising integrity and quality, to build that.”
The company did not rest on its laurels. In 2012, MPL started to shift its philosophy from service delivery to an all-round solutions provider for the oil and gas industry. It harnessed its cultivated knowledge and human expertise of the sector to begin creating new business solutions for clients. The goal was to help clients cut costs and increase output. It is an ongoing success that maintains MPL’s stature as one of the companies in oil and gas to measure up to.
To help with its growth, MPL adopted an SAP platform in 2009 which soon grew to the SAP Business One suite in 2010 in a bid to support the expansion of the organization. As MPL added additional resources and offerings to their business, the growing complexity of its operations prompted the organization to engage with SAP yet again to define the SAP solutions roadmap that would ensure the optimal technology support of their business endeavors.
“The energy sector waxes and wanes with a lot of impunity. At the head of this are energy prices, particularly oil. As MPL, we saw a responsibility in helping our clients become as resilient towards these shifts as possible. But our internal operations are also impacted by that volatility and other industry criteria,” said Akintunde.
“Tender processes can take a long time and we maintain a fleet of ships and large equipment inventories that are subject to expensive maintenance, not to mention strong regulations. To manage all of that requires an unshakable operational foundation.”
MPL partnered with EarlyWatch, a well-known SAP Certified Associate based in Lagos, Nigeria. Through the insights of EarlyWatch’s monitoring tool, MPL was able to identify its growth and stress points. This led to the adoption of SAP All-in-One ERP, including modules for Finance and Control, Human Capital Management (HCM) for Payroll, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution, and Project Systems.
“With proven technology and years of experience on our side, we were able to assure MPL that our SAP All-In-One Implementation will be a benchmark solution for subsequent implementation in the oil and gas Industry,” said Ogunsanya Adedayo, Managing Director of EarlyWatch.
These modules cut across all of MPL’s systems and operations, allowing it to track transactions throughout the business. This not only helped streamline MPL’s continually evolving business processes, but delivered on business data through reports that help the company make informed decisions for its future.
SAP’s solutions have enabled MPL to track and approve purchase orders with ease. It could also engage payroll requirements seamlessly across all its operations, which unite a mix of salaried employees and contract workers. Other efficiencies sought included handling of inventory, billing of clients, and proper management of offshore projects.
This all lends itself towards making MPL a stable entity for its clients. “Players in this industry, particularly the international oil companies, don’t like serious risk given how quickly the landscape can change. To be of value to them meant MPL had to be seen as rock solid. That means our operations can’t be in doubt,” said Akintunde.
“Since MPL is repositioning itself as a solutions provider to help make clients leaner and more productive, our own structures had to be the same. This is something we were able to accomplish through SAP’s platforms.”
The implementation of SAP All-in-One ERP went live within 12 weeks and MPL is currently in the stability stage. The solution has already made a significant impression that MPL is looking at implementing further HCM modules during 2015.
“SAP Africa is proud to have delivered a comprehensive, industry-specific ERP solution to support MPL in driving innovation in their business. These SAP All-in-One solutions have specifically been designed to help manage every aspect of a fast-growing organization. We look forward to the next step of MPL’s business future,” said Kudzai Dana, Managing Director of SAP West Africa.
Akintunde concludes: “For us to be reliable, we need reliable partners. SAP and Earlywatch have become indispensable to building MPL’s future. We don’t intend to stand still, and with SAP, we’ll never have to.”
Oluwafisayo Ige writes for Sap.com/africa
