“ Sourcing and contract negotiations can be quite a manual process ,” says Nicholas Wright , Director , Digital and Innovation at bp who is responsible for the way in which bp approaches the market in the digital and innovation space . “ It requires careful attention at every step of the process — from capturing and sending the requirements out to suppliers to have them bid on particular requirements or scope , to the selection of a final vendor and the activities required to on-board them . It ' s an incredibly time- and resource-intensive process .” bp not only wanted to free up resources to concentrate on value-added procurement activity , they also wanted to ensure they were making the best use of the digital tools avalaible within the marketplace . To do this , bp wanted to be able to both automate as much of the process as possible , as well as monitor and analyze their procurement data at a granular level .
The solution
Wright says Fairmarkit is delivering “ a great outcome .” He says the platform automates what used to be a manual process to help bp do things faster , with less people . But for Wright , Fairmarkit ’ s proposition has served another benefit .
“ It has pushed the boundaries ,” he says . “ At bp , it was one of our first significant digital platforms , and it is disrupting the way that we work within procurement ; it ’ s actually made people stand up and realize that we can do things differently . As a team and a company , we ’ re inspired to go out and look for the next Fairmarkit , whatever that may be , and be more aware and open to disrupting other manual processes .”
The result
By working with Fairmarkit to automate processes , bp ’ s procurement team was able to deliver the same scope automatically that was previously done manually .
“ We can now do more with less ,” says Wright . “ Automation and the capture of data makes our platform infinitely smarter than any one person . We are now using real time data to make accurate decisions — more than one single brain can comprehend .”
bp procurement team members are also using data collected from previous transactions to make smarter decisions .
“ For instance , if we ’ re paying for a certain products and services , we can now see how much other organizations pay for those products and services and evaluate whether we ’ re getting a competitive price ,” says Wright . “ To be able to do that in real time — on every single transaction — is a level of transparency that is extremely value-additive . We ’ re using price history to inform the future .”