Kent chose Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence to enable a data driven approach to improving procurement business processes and supplier management on large and complex engineering projects.
Kent designs, builds, and maintains assets across the entire energy spectrum, providing end-to-end services from consulting and design to construction, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning. The company was formed in 2021 as a merger of several entities, and it now comprises 34 global offices and around 13,000 employees, with a stated purpose: “Courageously tackle the greatest challenge of our time—to bring our world the energy it needs in the most responsible way ever imagined.”
Energy transition away from hydrocarbons will take time, and Kent sees a huge opportunity to be at the forefront of that process.
Growing pains
When the merger was finalized in 2021, the company went from employing 3,000 people to 10,000 overnight. It also immediately started the journey of integrating multiple business units, whilst at the same time undertaking many high-value complex construction projects. Over 5,000 technology users were migrated to the Kent network, and more than 40 IT systems, applications, and programs were migrated into Oracle Fusion Applications, their chosen cloud-based platform. Implementing Oracle Fusion Applications was a major aspect of being able to manage the stability of the business in transition. Kent successfully went live on Oracle Fusion Finance and Procurement globally early in 2024.
Patrick Shearer is Senior Vice President, Supply Chain at Kent.
He joined the company just as the merger was being negotiated. Shearer explained, “Implementing Oracle Fusion was not without challenges. We were trying to integrate this new, much larger, business onto a new platform that we were trying to figure out for ourselves.” Nonetheless, they succeeded, and now all spend for the company globally is captured in Oracle. Shearer said, “That was quite an achievement. It gave us much more control of global spend. Now we can run procurement with our buyers based in either Mumbai or London, for any project anywhere in the world.” Using Oracle’s Procurement Portal, Kent has consistent procurement processes from Procure to Pay, using procurement teams located anywhere for any project the world over. As Shearer put it, “We can immediately start a new project in Papua New Guinea without having people physically there. It makes us extremely agile as an organization, and extremely attractive to our customers.”
Getting accurate information on suppliers
Once Kent had implemented Oracle Fusion for Procurement, they immediately turned on Fusion Data Intelligence (FDI) to gain visibility of their business. They were able to measure key metrics and distribute reports to all the users on Oracle Supplier Portal globally.
One important metric Kent was able to measure using FDI right from the beginning was Supplier Portal adoption. Shearer noted, “The level of adoption of Supplier Portal is one of our key metrics. It means we are managing the procurement processes properly; we are controlling spend and categorizing spend correctly and then we can understand it.” Kent’s finance processes are also enhanced, by pushing the invoice administration back to the supply chain via supplier portal. In just one year, invoices processed by Oracle Supplier Portal went from under 20% to almost 70%.
Having visibility of Supplier Portal adoption was beneficial for all business units and country managers; they were able to benchmark themselves against others and see where they could adopt best practices. It showed senior management that progress was being made in driving efficiency in the Procure to Pay process. Shearer also noted, “It also introduced a bit of competition between business units, which always helps. The same reports were visible to the ERP steering committee, including our CEO John Gilley and CFO Ben Jones, which helped drive accountability.”
For Kent, projects are typically very large, averaging more than $200 million. Subsequently, procurement for equipment and services is also substantial. With FDI, Kent was able to get full transparency of very complex purchase orders and work order confirmations. It enabled them to enhance project controls, manage committed spend and accruals, and progress much better than before.
Managing risk
Kent’s business is also about managing risk. Some projects are delivered in remote and challenging environments, which leads to some contractors having less mature business processes. To help manage this risk, one of Kent’s first actions was to centralize all supplier management in one team, based in Mumbai. They then classified all suppliers with a third party (TP) risk factor, 1 to 7. TP 1 is the riskiest; typically, construction contractors with a large workforce in the field, using heavy plant or conducting other high-risk activities.
Kent uses FDI to visualize the risk data and help them assess the risk associated with suppliers. For some contractors, high-risk activities were identified, which enabled Kent to focus efforts on quality supervision and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) management in these areas. Kent is also able to use the visibility to structure their supplier audit activity more effectively.
Shearer noted, “Being consistent about how we categorize suppliers by risk—before we even categorize actual spend—means we can visualize purchase volume overlaid against risk and ensure a safer working environment with better-quality project delivery.”
Being data driven
Shearer shared that executive leaders are now able to be data driven for decision making, “Executives really appreciate the information provided by FDI. They can’t get enough of it. Adoption is rapid because they want to have visibility of the data.” This places a large emphasis on data quality. As Shearer puts it, “A big focus is the integrity of the data. FDI allows us to test that because all the data is visible and accessible to all business users. It’s easier to spot data quality issues. We also want to make data malleable, so that business users can carve it up in diverse ways, or drill to whatever level they need to answer their questions.”
One of the other benefits of FDI is the ability to blend third-party data with Fusion data. For example, Kent has added data from Exiger, used for supplier risk management, and overlaid it with their supplier database to do 24-hour monitoring of compliance risk of their supply chain. Kent uses FDI to report on the combined data. It helps Kent monitor the number of ‘red flag’ events, the number of high-risk potential issues, and how quickly they can close them out.
Self-service reporting
Shearer expects business users to become more self-sufficient. He explained, “At present we have worked closely with around 10 super-users. They were very engaged and curious to explore what the data could tell them about their business, and we did some report customization reacting to their suggestions. Initially, Oracle’s specialist team were important to the success of this collaboration, helping to guide us how best to exploit FDI.” Kent has now established a centralized reporting team, including the super-users, to make them more self-sufficient in expanding FDI to meet the evolving needs of the business.
Kent just started using AI with Oracle Sourcing, helping them to monitor performance of project controls and measure engineering progress. Shearer explains, “If information about services’ contract receiving can be added and combined with goods’ receiving data, AI could help us to improve. Once Oracle Sourcing is fully implemented, AI will also help us in vendor assessment and selection, including blanket purchase agreements and punchouts.”
Finally, Shearer notes, “FDI is not being used for strategic decision making yet. But that’s definitely going to happen in the future, once we have the right data right captured to enable it.”
Follow these links to get more information on Kent and FDI, and you can always ask questions in the Oracle Analytics Community.