On October 1, 2018, Andeavor and Marathon Petroleum Corp. closed their strategic combination, creating a large-scale geographically diversified and highly integrated refining, marketing, and midstream company.
In a conversation with Michael Krigsman from CXO Talk, Andeavor Chief Information Officer Tim Harris explains why data is the next frontier for delivering value through technology and how moving to cloud has changed the mindset of the company.
On digital transformation:
“When we looked at our company, we looked at our goal to grow so aggressively, both through acquisition and organically. We didn’t feel like our business was fit for purpose. Either the systems or the processes really weren’t ready to support what we wanted to do. We’ve moved 100 percent to the cloud. We’ve got a new digital workplace that really changes the way that all of our employees interface with technology. Probably the most monumental change has been our change to SAP S/4HANA. We’re the first oil and gas company now running SAP S/4HANA, and we’ve been live about two months.”
On the move to cloud and breaking down silos:
“With our SAP strategy, we wanted a single application that integrated the entire business. Now that we’re fully integrated, the silos don’t work anymore. In the old days where it was more of a best-of-breed model, one application per function, people could work independently. If data was wrong in one system, it didn’t impact the entire business, so you could get away with it. There were still problems that we couldn’t see, but you could get away with that. Now, end to end — from the initial contract entered in the system all the way through until we’re collecting cash from the retail stations — if we’re not working together and talking about the data and the way that we structure things from an end-to-end standpoint, we’re not going to get our job done.”
On how the company is using data and how it is changing the business:
“We believe that all things digital rest on top of data, so data has to be structured the right way. It’s got to be cleansed the right way and it’s got to be managed the right way so that we can really get our insights. We believe that we can lead the industry in digital transformation, and it’s 100 percent because we’ve taken the time to structure the data the right way. We’ve got our IoT sensors dumping data into our systems now and giving us insights in ways that we’ve never had before. It is going to be the core of everything that we do.”
Watch the complete interview above to understand more about the company’s digital transformation, why data is the foundation for innovation, and how it is breaking down the silos in the process.
