Client background:

• Client: Middle Eastern utilities company
• Industry type: Utilities
• Products or services: Water supply, waste water treatment
• Areas of operations: Middle East

Challenge

A leading utility serving millions of households in the Middle East realized that its country’s increasing commercialization and growing infrastructure would demand improved planning and management of the water and sanitation supply chain. The utility sought a cloud solution to enhance its operational effectiveness and asset maintenance. It set about developing an adoption roadmap to meet the region’s future demands while optimizing short- and long-term costs.

Solution

The utility engaged Wipro’s supply chain and organizational change-management consultants to better understand the business problem and identify a path forward. Using Wipro’s DNA (Digital Navigator Advisory) framework, the team identified Oracle Fusion SCM Cloud as the best starting point for the cloud journey. Wipro then proposed a transformation model and roadmap that established a Hybrid / Co-Existence model to ensure a smooth transition to the utility’s cloud-based future.

A key component in this strategic plan was creating the systemic ability to plan for spare parts and link it to the procurement process. With this ability, the Middle Eastern leader would be able to improve its operational effectiveness and better maintain key assets.

Wipro deployed a robust and automated process to achieve these goals using the Oracle SCM Cloud Demand and Supply Planning application. This provided the utility a configurable and scalable solution for demand planning, with intelligent forecasting based on consumption history and failure rates. Reports and exception management enabled superior forecast monitoring, while the entire system was seamlessly integrated with the Oracle Enterprise Asset Management and Inventory module. Supply plan recommendations were then fed directly into supply execution systems, dramatically streamlining and bringing more intelligence to the utility’s processes.

Business Impact

Empowered by its adoption roadmap and change-management strategy, the Middle Eastern utility was able to deploy an efficient, integrated cloud-based system that delivered a smarter spare-parts supply chain. Using a demand-based model, the cloud solution increased forecast accuracy by 25%. In addition, the utility was able to improve its inventory control planning by analyzing spare parts consumption patterns. And, with maintenance strategies now linked to part-failure rates, the utility achieved its objective of enhancing its operational effectiveness and asset maintenance.