Dynamic agility at a midstream energy firm
50%
The solution shortened planning cycles from four weeks to two.
12
The company expanded its four quarterly forecasts to add 12 flash forecasts.
13
The company can internally support 13 use cases, plus more in the future.
At a glance
Client
Midstream oil and gas company
Industry
Energy
Our role
Implement a planning solution
Our solution
Anaplan with internal support
Quick decisions for a complex infrastructure
Scenario
Leaders at an energy firm needed to make better and faster planning decisions in response to volatile changes.
Approach
The Grant Thornton team designed and implemented an Anaplan platform solution with in-house support.
Result
Company leaders have a unified source for the latest information and even scenario planning.
Scenario
Insight across the infrastructure
A midstream oil and gas company needed better insight across its massive and complex infrastructure.
The company owned networks of gathering and transportation pipelines, processing plants, fractionators, barge terminals, rail terminals, storage facilities, brine disposal wells and CO₂ transportation, serving providers in natural gas, crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids. As the volatility of energy market prices and external factors accelerated, the company’s leaders needed faster access to decision-driving information.
The company’s analysts and leaders wanted more visibility than its legacy systems and spreadsheet-based processes could deliver. Many of the company’s challenges related to manual processes that sent files and made updates with information that was out of sync.
The need for clarity and speed
To consolidate information and improve planning insight, the company wanted to connect and standardize fragmented data across its diverse asset profile along with internal budgeting and planning. Then, it wanted a connected cloud framework to streamline its annual and quarterly planning activities.
The insights needed to be accessible for everyone from executives to department owners, providing visibility into volume impacts and pricing sensitivity with the ability to plan scenarios and analyze contingencies. The company needed help with identifying the right technology solution, building collaboration across stakeholder teams and ensuring the solution’s success.
Approach
Unified teams
The Grant Thornton team led the client in a solution assessment that analyzed the data and unified the business units required to accomplish the company’s objectives.
The team’s analysis involved all stakeholders across groups and geographies, along with those who were going to experience downstream effects.
To truly accomplish the company’s goals, the team needed to do more than implement a tool. It needed to understand the business and best practices, even asking about the need for legacy processes. The company appreciated the team’s hands-on approach and critical thinking about how to be more effective.
Unified data
The team paired its analysis with best practices to design a cloud-based planning solution that consolidated data from commercial contracts and business systems for a single source of truth on the Anaplan platform.
Using the platform, the team built models tailored to the company’s business processes and data. The team also ensured the reporting that every level of stakeholder required, for offloading, leveraging and planning capacity across facilities and regions. The solution needed to consolidate a wide range of information while also streamlining processes — both for faster insight and reduced workloads in the future.
Beyond implementation
The Grant Thornton team collaborated to help ensure success throughout the project, while also keeping an eye on support. In addition to the end-to-end foundation, implementation, go-live and initial support, the team helped establish a Center of Excellence to support the solution internally. The Center of Excellence (COE) included a sustainable framework for the company to manage the complex environment on its own. Now, the company has a three-person team with 13 different use cases, entirely governed by the internal COE team, to handle enhancements and new planning processes or connectivity.
While the COE might mean less work for the Grant Thornton team, it means better agility and greater success for the company. A solution’s success usually requires more than just technology; it requires true change in the organization.
How we can help you
INDUSTRY
SERVICE
Result
Next-level decisions
The new solution connected commercial and operational capacity decision-makers with the information they needed to accelerate responses, improve capital allocations, capture volume across the business and ultimately increase their collaboration.
The solution replaced the inefficiencies of various budget owners and spreadsheets with a centralized data repository that provided a single source of truth, delivering updated details that the business couldn’t access before.
With this data-driven pulse across the organization, analysts and leaders can now make next-level decisions. The central foundation connects price, volume, capital, cost and other variables into standard planning cycles.
Company analysts not only have better insight, they also have better ways to share it. Instead of emailing files that are snapshots of information, analysts can share dashboards that let each user drill into the latest data.
Time savings
The team with the greatest benefit from the new solution is the financial planning and analysis group that lives in this data every day.
Planning time decreased by 50%, from four weeks to two weeks per team. The new speed improved cost controls and improved morale among the analysts who had fewer late nights at work.
Agility and scenario planning
The speed of planning also means that the company can run forecasts more often and adapt with greater agility. The company still has four quarterly planning and budgeting sessions, but it also runs 12 smaller flash forecasts, one each month.
The system is so dynamic that it even allows analysts to test the numbers for potential future scenarios. Now, they can test different scenarios to do ‘what-if’ planning without altering their planning information.
The future
As the company’s needs continue to evolve into the future, the company’s Center of Excellence is now prepared to help expand use cases, evolving and supporting the solution.
Planning analysts can be very accustomed to their manual processes, but the benefits of the company’s Anaplan solution have won over its users.
The new solution is helping the company enhance its business, providing insights and driving the optimal performance the company needs in today’s changing economic climate.
Connect with our team
Head of Energy Industry
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC
Partner, Audit Services, Grant Thornton LLP
Partner, Business Consulting
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC
Jonathan is a Partner in the Operations & Performance practice.
Charlotte, North Carolina
Industries
- Manufacturing, Transportation & Distribution
- Technology, Media & Telecommunications
- Energy
- Retail & Consumer Brands
Service Experience
- Advisory Services
- Business Consulting
Content disclaimer
This Grant Thornton Advisors LLC content provides information and comments on current issues and developments. It is not a comprehensive analysis of the subject matter covered. It is not, and should not be construed as, accounting, legal, tax, or professional advice provided by Grant Thornton Advisors LLC. All relevant facts and circumstances, including the pertinent authoritative literature, need to be considered to arrive at conclusions that comply with matters addressed in this content.
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC and its subsidiary entities are not licensed CPA firms.
For additional information on topics covered in this content, contact a Grant Thornton Advisors LLC professional.
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