About SAIPEM

Saipem is one of the global leaders in drilling services, as well as in the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of pipelines and complex projects, onshore and offshore, in the oil & gas market, with revenues of 10$ billion thanks to 32,000+ professionals in 60+ countries.

 

The situation

After having undergone an organizational restructuring process, Saipem is looking to “revamp” and optimize its internal categorization of equipment and services. Ultimately, the objective is to reduce the number of overall categories to decrease inefficiencies and categorization management costs. As a market leader Saipem has a very developed and complex categorization of over 2.000 goods and services, representing an “heritage” and the cumulated experience of the organization. The restructuring process had created multiple Divisions within Client’s organization, meaning that there are several stakeholders and actors to be involved on almost each decision made regarding a single category.

 

SupplHi’s approach

SupplHi performed a diagnostic on the existing categorization (attributes, accounting principles, technical evaluators and criticality level, frame agreements tied to each category, …), including a spending analysis to verify how categories are used and which ones are used the most and the least. Furthermore, SupplHi discussed future business needs, also from a make vs buy perspective on supplies.

The core of the activities has been on 55 disciplinary meetings with Client’s various Engineering and Procurement departments to discuss proposed changes to the categorization of equipment and services.

 

The results

Ultimate results have been the 20% decrease of the overall number of categories from ~2000 to ~1600. This was made possible thanks to a series of different actions, including but not limited to: merger of similar categories; deletion of obsolete categories; addition of newly required categories (new technologies, new business segments, …). Furthermore, the SupplHi Team performed the update of the Client’s category tree through changes of the of the tree’s structure itself, improving, as a whole, efficiency in Vendor Management processes.

“I would like to thank you for the delivery of the Commodity Codes Optimization for Saipem, covering the needs of all our Divisions of the new Organization. My colleagues and I are very pleased with the outcome of the activities, which were one of the building blocks towards bringing efficiency to our Procurement process. Your approach and constant availability throughout the execution of the activities were fundamental. All actors involved, from Top Management to technical resources, appreciated your professionalism and support.” said Mr. Paolo Pedrazzini, Procurement and Post Order Services Manager at Saipem.