BrazilNorwegian energy firm Statoil selects Capgemini as strategic digital partner
Norwegian oil and gas player Statoil has selected Capgemini to support the company with the execution of its digital strategy and roadmap. The three year deal also sees the French-origin IT-services giant take the lead in the ramp-up of Statoil’s new Digital Center of Excellence.
With operations in over 30 countries worldwide, Statoil, which later this year will rebrand as Equinor, is one of the globe’s twenty largest energy companies. Following the launch of a new company-wide digital strategy in April last year, the firm’s CIO Sonja Chirico Indrebo established a Digital Center of Excellence (CoE) that has been tasked with leading the execution of the IT agenda.
Key pillars of the refreshed digital strategy include making more use of process digitisation to enhance the efficiency of core business | support processes and the application of advanced analytics – leveraging data techniques to gain better insights in operations and performance. Another pillar is a greater focus on automating labour intensive tasks that could be performed better by robots, including roles that involve a heavy physical component such as drilling and installation of assets. Technologies that are eyed to bring breakthrough performance improvement include robotisation, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence.
“Statoil has big ambitions for building internal digital competency and transforming the company into being a digital leader amongst the major energy suppliers,” stated the oil & gas company in a press statement. In Europe, Statoil competes with the likes of British Petroleum (UK), Eni (Italy), Shell (Netherlands/UK) and Total (France), while globally it faces the likes of Russian giants Gazprom, Lukoil and Rosneft, and US player ExxonMobil.
Digital Center of Excellence
To deliver on the digital ambitions, Statoil’s Digital Center of Excellence has developed a digital roadmap, which spans a range of initiatives, from the incubation of new cross company digital initiatives and the launch of IT-driven business improvement projects to the overhaul of complete technical infrastructures in business units. Innovation is another key area of the roadmap, with room provided for piloting new technologies in a smaller, controlled environment to identify if changes could benefit the business and operations.
As part of the Digital Center of Excellence’s execution agenda, the Norwegian company launched a tender procedure to find the most suited consulting firms and technology partners to support the reform. One of the strategic partners selected out of the competitive process is Capgemini, an IT-services group with 200,000 professionals in over 40 countries. “We are very proud and pleased that Statoil has chosen us as a strategic partner for its digitisation and we look forward to supporting them on their digital journey,” said Anil Agarwal, who leads Capgemini in Norway and Sweden. “We will use our breadth and experience across industries and disciplines to support them,” he added.
For Capgemini in the Nordics, the deal comes three months after it secured a large ERP-contract with the Swedish Army, in a potentially seven year deal that sees the firm’s four offices in Sweden (Stockholm, Göteborg, Solna and Malmö) help the army with the upgrade of its main IT system for its circa 20,000 end users.
The three year agreement with Statoil sees Capgemini provide a broad array of services, from consultancy such as digital strategy and digital service design, to project management, such as delivery capacity, and technology, spanning among others data exploration and visualisation, statistical modelling, predictive analytics and data engineering. The services will primarily be delivered by Capgemini to Statoil’s operations in Norway, but can on request of Statoil be branched out to other global locations as well.
Statoil is majority owned by the Norwegian government, which holds around 67% of the shares in the Olso-head-quartered company.
