bp
“ We used to be supplyled , meaning we had a commodity and we would release that to the market and that ' s our bread and butter . But as we reinvented ourselves and created a more digital organisation , we became demand-led ”
NICK WRIGHT DIRECTOR , DIGITAL & INNOVATION SOURCING AT bp
Procurement workflows can be quite cumbersome and require a colossal amount of historical and comparative data that is traditionally manually studied to govern processes . This explains why digital transformation has been crucial to decision-making , where both real-time analytics and historical data is available at hand , thereby reducing the need for manual synthesising of information . bp is in the process of evaluating all our existing procurement vendor engagements as part of a wider procurement transformation initiative .
A good example of an improved workflow is the contract negotiation process . Traditionally , procurement officers would spend weeks if not months reviewing documents , negotiating contracts and running tenders , however with the collaboration from digitally native vendors , bp has essentially taken work out of the system and negotiated better deals over time . “ The value of working with new suppliers is that it takes work out of the system by delivering a scope that was previously resource intensive , using realtime data to make accurate decisions . Essentially , we ’ re using our history to determine our future ,” adds Nick .
To support bp ’ s customer-centric approach , bp ’ s procurement and sourcing teams are pivoting to reflect the company ’ s strategy . This can mean partnering with suppliers to co-develop products to meet new business challenges .
With sustainability as a long-term goal , within 10 years , bp aims to have increased its annual low carbon investment 10-fold to around $ 5 billion a year , building out an integrated portfolio of low carbon technologies , whilst over the same period , bp ’ s oil and gas production is expected to
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