Increasing effectiveness of offshore delivery
Offshore IT Supplier to Global Energy Major
Project Brief
Our client, an emerging powerhouses of the offshore IT industry, is a strategic partner to a leading international energy major with in the UK. All areas of our client’s business have shown phenomenal growth. Its core technical capability is internationally acknowledged as the solid foundation for growth. Increasingly, it is admired for a bold, acquisition-led strategy towards higher value-added services.
However, growth has led to a new set of challenges. The expectations of our client’s partner go beyond the traditional “bread and butter” of offshoring. The energy major looks to its strategic IT partners to provide thought leadership and best-of-breed capability in supporting the business needs of processes that are increasingly globally streamlined.
As it looks to consolidate and grow its position, our client is competing in the Premier League of IT providers, with well-established global operations. As the newcomer, it does not always have in place existing critical mass to support onshore capability.
A particular need had been identified in two global applications in the energy major’s wholesale operations. Better use of information technology was seen as critical to supporting the business need in this highly competitive market.
Working in the energy industry is notoriously difficult for those that do not have a strong understanding of its complexities. Barnsnape needed to rapidly deploy seasoned, experienced professionals with strong domain experience. It further had to supply a capability that fitted seamlessly into its client’s offering and could hit the ground running at full speed.
What Barnsnape Did
Barnsnape deployed very rapidly - within a few weeks of the initial enquiry. Its effort was spearheaded by two individuals with a combined experience of over 30 years working within international energy majors. These individuals immediately integrated with the client’s partner-facing team to provide an enhanced capability to the energy major.
Barnsnape staff were involved - at the hands-on level - as part of the onshore teams delivering projects. They became an important “bridge” between the energy major’s existing onshore project teams and the offshore capability. Much of this communication was around soft issues (including cultural alignment) where additional communication channels were opened up that did not disrupt the established project governance.
Barnsnape also worked with the team that was responsible for making sure that the business users got what they wanted (and what they were prepared to pay for). This extended from detailed, fit for purpose reviews of functional specifications that were already in place to conceptual development and evaluation of competing, off-the-shelf technology packages.
These activities were also used to create a new account development strategy and exploitation of ad hoc opportunities for expanding the client’s presence with the energy major.
Outcome and Benefits
Barnsnape’s assistance immediately enhanced its client’s capability. Because of the rapid growth of the client’s business, this need could not be met by organic development of its existing staff. Additionally, Barnsnape’s staff were experienced enough to immediately integrate into a very complex operating area.
The domain experience of its staff gave a major boost to the energy majors’ perception of the client’s staff: it appreciated that ‘these were people from within the industry’.
Specific benefits to the client included:
The energy major recognised the business benefits. It also appreciated that the rapid deployment of Barnsnape resources delivered an immediate step-up in performance to the overall partnership.