Benefit Summary. Saipem creates a strategic project management solution

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1 customer success story: Saipem Spa Saipem creates a strategic project management solution with CA Clarity PPM. Benefit Summary Business Overview Owned 43 percent by Eni and listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, Saipem is a global oil and gas industry contractor specialising in the design and construction of exploration, transport and processing infrastructure, including chemical and petrochemical plants and pipelines, both onshore and offshore. Customer Profile Industrial Sector: Oil and gas Company: Saipem Spa Revenue (2008): 10 billion Employees: 38,000 Challenge The increasing complexity of Saipem s work and the company s expanding geographical reach require sophisticated project management. Saipem management therefore needed a way to manage the project life cycle and in particular the workforce, enabling the company to meet project requirements through efficient allocation of human resources. Solution Saipem found the answer to this problem in CA Clarity Project & Portfolio Management (PPM). Besides managing the various phases of the project lifecycle CA Clarity PPM also enables the company to perform strategic long-term planning to meet business goals set by top management. Benefit CA Clarity PPM today manages more than 700 projects and is used by around 300 people, typically project managers, department heads, project control staff and HR managers. The solution gives Saipem a powerful tool for planning demand and resource capacity, fully integrated with the management control process, helping to support strategic decisions regarding project allocation. CA CustomerSuccessProgram

2 We needed a change of course, a new model capable of managing over time the specific activities of Saipem's business units. Alessandro Tintori, ICT Project Manager, Saipem Business Overview Leading specialist in oil and gas exploration Saipem is a joint stock company formed in 1956 and 43 percent owned by Eni. Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, it is organised into three business units Offshore, Onshore and Drilling and specialises in remote and deepwater oil and gas exploration. In 2008 revenues amounted to billion, 776 million more than Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) in 2008 was billion, up 309 million on the previous year. Saipem is a leading provider of engineering, procurement, project management and construction services, specialising in the planning and execution of high-tech offshore and onshore contracts for the extraction of natural gas and heavy oils. Saipem has a strong local presence in strategic and emerging areas such as West Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, South America and South East Asia. Saipem is a truly global organisation. Besides the large European contingent, much of the company s workforce of 38,000 comes from developing countries and represents over 100 different nationalities. It also operates major service hubs in India, Croatia, Romania, Nigeria and Indonesia. The firm typically works through Engineering, Procurement, Installation and Construction (EPIC) contracts, which cover all tasks for complex plants and associated infrastructure from design through to startup. The group s EPIC engineering and project management capabilities were further reinforced by targeted acquisitions, notably that of Bouygues Offshore in 2002 and Snamprogetti in 2006, moves which led to an increased project management workforce today numbering around 7,000 people. Challenge High visibility to meet challenges of geography and scale The project execution centres perform one of the group s core functions. The complexity and wide geographical distribution of its operations demand sophisticated management and control. Saipem management needed a tool that enabled them to manage the entire project life cycle and in particular the allocation of specific human resources and skills to each task. At the time the organisation relied on applications built within the acquired companies that gave only a limited vision of company processes and lacked scalability and manageability. These were custom solutions with vertical silo architecture which was unable to respond to the changing corporate structure. The challenge was to develop a solution that could meet the needs of an organisation of 38,000 people, with numerous external partners and a wide geographical presence. We needed a change of course," says Ugo Salvi, Chief Information Officer of Saipem. "Having a solution that could manage the many different activities of Saipem s business units had become a strategic goal."

3 CA Clarity PPM guarantees the availability of human resources with the necessary skills to handle a range of tasks at every stage of the project. Ugo Salvi, Chief Information Officer, Saipem The list of criteria laid down by Saipem management was very stringent. Workforce management covers the entire project management life cycle, from exploration, capacity planning in relation to business potential, through the bidding stage to final execution. At each stage of the operation Saipem and other group companies must supply qualified resources with the skills required to handle the tasks involved. Workforce management has to balance demand against capacity, explains Alessandro Tintori, ICT Project Manager at Saipem. This sounds simple, but the reality is intricate and complex and demands a sophisticated IT solution which can give precise staffing details, the name and surname of everyone involved, along with their roles and professional qualifications. The solution had to support group strategic planning in line with business goals set by top management, for instance, coordinating the big objectives on the refineries or pipelines and guaranteeing the availability of the necessary skills. It was also essential, beginning with a full review of corporate processes, to create an efficient workflow engine to manage the workforce at each stage of the project. This solution needed to be sufficiently flexible and scalable to handle not just employed personnel but also external resources belonging to the various independent contractors. Web access was another essential feature, given Saipem s wide geographical distribution, and indeed this was a deciding factor in the choice of software. Finally, the solution had to allow the creation of personalised views and to provide real-time information to all those involved in the management process, from the project manager to heads of department, business lines and all staff functions. Solution A customised solution for a better fit The initiative was sponsored by two Saipem executives from the Human Resources and the Multibusiness Engineering and Workforce Management departments," explained Tintori. The solution was realised using CA Clarity PPM, which provided the planning engine and front-end application. CA Clarity PPM depends on information coming from a whole series of applications. Peoplesoft is the existing application used to manage in-house resources. SAP R/3 is mainly used to track project personnel and control corporate management processes.

4 CA took a particularly farsighted and courageous approach without sidestepping the various challenges thrown up by the operation. Ugo Salvi, Chief Information Officer, Saipem Interconnections with SAP R/3 enabled Saipem to create the necessary accounting links with the corporate budget planning process so that CA Clarity PPM can manage performance by position, cost centre or project. The third component which interfaces with CA Clarity PPM is the data warehouse which allows Saipem to analyse aggregated data. The software selection process looked at commercially available and custom solutions, and opted for the former, with the choice falling on CA Clarity PPM. Though Saipem was aware that a certain amount of personalisation would be necessary, they recognised in CA Clarity PPM the functionality they needed. The first stage of implementation involved analysis of the entire process. This was followed by process-product mapping to find the ideal design and balance the functional specifications with the features of the product. A fundamental contribution at this stage was made by the process owners, those people with an in-depth knowledge of the process who were able to recommend the functions best suited to meet the operational needs of the business. The personalisation phase required considerable changes to the original design and the technology platform. Such fine tuning of the solution involved a certain amount of risk for both parties, customer and vendor. But the end result was a solution that creates competitive value for the whole organisation. As Salvi remarks, CA took a particularly far-sighted and courageous approach without sidestepping the various challenges thrown up by the operation. Results Balanced between functional design and technology According to Tintori, "The solution has given us greater operational flexibility and the ability to react faster to changes in the market, especially at the exploration stage. It also provides extra detail, allowing us to schedule resources by professional group and role to give Saipem clearer real-time visibility on project workloads and associated costs. The active involvement of IT personnel and those with in-depth knowledge of Saipem s processes, together with the unflagging commitment of CA and the Accenture experts and consultants, ensured an optimal balance between functional design and the technology. Today CA Clarity PPM manages more than 700 projects of varying duration both large typically lasting months and small. Personalisation and stabilisation of the solution produced a project management tool built on CA Clarity PPM that has become one of Saipem s mainstream applications. One of the competitive advantages of CA Clarity PPM is its workflow management capability, which enables Saipem to structure resource allocation across the entire project life cycle in line with the available budget. The resulting application also enables Saipem to monitor project resources as well as permanent staff in the various departments.

5 The solution provides a powerful tool for planning resource demand and capacity while helping to control costs by tracking scheduled working hours and budget. CA Clarity PPM is used by around 300 people, including project managers, heads of department, project control staff and HR management. The solution provides a powerful tool for planning resource demand and capacity while helping to control costs by tracking scheduled working hours and budget. Deployment of the solution involved a vast number of different people and its success was guaranteed by the close collaboration between Saipem and CA. Salvi comments, Solutions of this scale cannot be built by IT alone but require input from those with the practical know-how and farsightedness to drive the project forward and make a real contribution to the company s future. The solution was completed in around 13 months. The first two to three months was spent building a prototype and testing that inside a group company. The first major release came in October 2008 for the Onshore BU, where the application is now in production with positive results. The solution is currently being rolled out to the other Saipem business units and companies that will further increase deployment of the solution. To learn more and see how CA software solutions enable other organizations to unify and simplify IT management for better business results, visit ca.com/success. Copyright 2009 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.