Building a Digital Center of Excellence for a National Oil Company

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The Challenge

The value of data remained untapped due to severely underdeveloped digital capabilities, leading to reduced efficiencies in critical business activities, especially in exploration. Short-term remedies would not have brought the desired long-term value. The client had to begin cultivating a digital culture that embraced new opportunities derived from data, AI, cloud services and quantum computing.

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Our Approach

BCG Platinion realized the necessity for a Digital Center of Excellence (DCoE) that would integrate all the independent digital products being managed by individual departments and act as an innovation hub driving the digital agenda for the company. The endeavor brought together a multidisciplinary team with BCG Platinion and BCG Gamma developing the business, technology and data science departments that would begin to evaluate and prioritize new innovations to support exploration, production and development of hydrocarbons in the Middle East.

Out of the DCoE, BCG Platinion designed a new digital operating model, a use case roadmap and the architecture for a new digital technology stack.

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The team also developed a digital cluster strategy and designed repeatable processes that could help the client prioritize new use cases and select the best-fitting software solutions. To launch the DCoE, BCG Platinion and BCG Gamma developed two MVPs to prove the value proposition for the center, one based on processing vast volumes of time-series data and another on image analysis. The success of the digital use cases helped to illustrate the digital credentials of the hub and encourage further innovation.

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Impact

1. Enhanced the company’s ability to leverage the value of data
2. Aligned digital initiatives with company strategy
3. Created a digital-centric culture that embraced IT at a more senior level

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Looking Into the Future

The culture of innovation that emanated from a central authority was a catalyst for collaboration amongst specialist skills that were, before, working in silos.

Now the combined assessment and experimentation with emerging technologies in advanced analytics, AI, and quantum computing has expedited the exploration and production of the country’s crude oil production and natural gas supply.

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