KUALA LUMPUR, 28 OCTOBER 2009 – Malaysia’s largest owner and operator of offshore vessels in the oil and gas sector, Bumi Armada, says it has seen significant business improvement after adopting a SAP solution.
Speaking of rollout of business solutions firm SAP Malaysia’s centralised management platform, Bumi Armada Berhad vice president of shared services and SAP project director, Chong Wai Choong, said: “Business processes within Bumi Armada are now automated and streamlined based on industry best practices.”
“As a result, efficiency is tremendously enhanced. For instance, time taken to close and report the month-end financial statements is reduced by as much as 71 per cent and to just six days from the previous 21 days,” said Chong.
“The enhancement in business processes and overall operations is imperative for our regional expansion plans,” he said. “Bumi Armada is the market leader in Malaysia and therefore we needed a truly robust enterprise management software to support our growth.”
Bumi Armada has 25 entities serving oil and gas clients in Southeast Asia, India, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, and Mexico, with close to 50 vessels.
Centralised platform makes for a more cohesive team
Chong said Bumi Armada rolled out a SAP ERP [enterprise resource planning] application with modules for financial accounting and controlling, procurement and logistics execution, sales and distribution, and project management for all its entities, in only six months.
“Business-critical data from all subsidiaries now resides in a centralised platform, which allows for easy retrieval, updating, and sharing of information among the staff members and managers alike,” said Chong. “Previously, each subsidiary was managing its own data and business transactions, which affected business visibility and prevented the headquarters from obtaining a good overview of the group’s actual cash position.”
“Having fast, reliable, and structured insight into the business improves decision-making, reduces the time involved in creating and approving budgets and enables the comparison of target and actual data from all the different countries in which it operates,” said SAP Malaysia managing director, V.R. Srivatsan.
“While many companies would rather adopt a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to new solutions, our philosophy is to be the first to market,” said Chong, adding that SAP’s
BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application helped to segment data for each vessel by location, company, business unit, and profit and loss. “We did not have that kind of power in the past.”
Looking ahead, Chong said Bumi Armada’s vision is to harness SAP NetWeaver to send and share business reports and charts using mobile devices. “In the past, everyone was working on their own, but SAP solutions have helped us build a more cohesive team. Everyone is now collaborating and making decisions on what I call the one version of the truth.”
