Last week we began our series of customer stories with Eastman Chemical and the organization’s migration from paper-based contracts to an automated contract management solution. Today we feature FMC Technologies, a leading global provider of technology solutions for the energy industry, and the organization’s quest for the right spend analysis solution. Named by FORTUNE® Magazine as the World’s Most Admired Oil and Gas Equipment, Service Company in 2012, FMC has approximately 18,400 employees and operates 30 production facilities in 16 countries. Here German Torres, global analysis manager, discusses FMC’s transformation from a regional-based to global procurement organization.
Transcript
My name’s German Torres, I’m responsible for the analysis, process and systems function for the sourcing procurement group inside FMC Technologies. What we do is we build oil field equipment. We engineer, we do project management for oil companies. Our supply chain is very unique, it’s highly outsourced, so keeping track of the performance of the suppliers is key.
What that means is even though we have four (4) main facilities around the world our supply chain is scattered all over the world. When we started this journey the sourcing and procurement function in FMC was going through a transformation of moving from being at regional-based procurement organization to a global-based. What we needed was a tool, a system that allows us to bring consistency across our regions; build standardization when comes to metrics, when it comes to processes. We needed a tool that could be quickly implemented, that could show quick return on investment, that would bring immediate value to the people who were going to use it.
So we searched in the market what was available and we talked to Spend Radar to do our data analytics, and our dashboard and our capabilities. Moving from regional to global is what drove us. The ability to have information at your fingertips quickly, that is first and foremost. The ability to have consistency, a consistent view of all the world and how we operate. The ability to have people accessing the same information at once, reading the same story.
In the ideal world there should be no deviations. That’s our philosophy, that’s how we work. We’re a zero defect company. To get there we need to measure. So the way we do is we simply measure these non-conformances, we track it by supplier and by the type.
What type of problems do the suppliers have? Each supplier may have different circumstances and reasons for it. We track it, we sit with them and talk to put an improvement plan in place until we reach our end goal of being a zero-defect company.
Each region was used to working independently. What that means in practical terms is everybody building their own metrics, everybody creating their own monthly reports. The single point of valid that I find is consistency. The ability to have a single version of the truth. We’re able to consolidate all our information, put it in the dashboard and allow people to retrieve that information for their daily operation.
The value it brings is all these multi-dimensional views. You have all of our datasource is there, is hosted there, and then each one of the users which have different interests, right. You have have category people, you have procurement people, other people can view the same information from a different perspective. And that’s the value, the multi-dimensional views you can get out of it.
German Torres, global analysis manager, FMC Technologies
