Supply Chain Risk Assessment: A Case Study on How SpendEdge Helped a Global Energy Company Allocate Recovery Times to All Critical Activities

Overview of the global energy sector

The fourth industrial revolution has been an exciting time, especially for companies in the global energy sector. In 2017, the global energy landscape outgrew the traditional centers of demand and turned its focus to emerging economies. The evolution of IoT, blockchain, and distributed energy systems are some of the significant trends influencing the energy sector. Additionally, smart meters, microgrids, energy management systems, and IP-enabled sensors are just a few more examples of how innovative digital assets have become the “hot trend” in the global energy sector.

However, several factors are affecting the growth prospects of the global energy sector. A few factors include:

• Uncertainties: A major issue facing the energy sector is the mounting uncertainty that complicates the financial feasibility of the major investments required for the development of large conventional and deep-sea oil and gas projects. Moreover, these uncertainties come from the effects on the supply side of tight oil and shale gas production and the factors that affect demand for oil and gas in major importing countries.
• Price volatility: Forecasting oil and gas prices has always been a challenging exercise for energy sector players, but it has gotten even more complicated in the past few years. Earlier, there was a broad consensus of where supply and demand would head, and the industry invested accordingly. However, now, there are several new factors affecting supply and demand.

Many such challenges are compelling firms in the global energy sector to leverage the use of supply chain risk assessment solutions. Supply chain risk assessment solutions help firms prune their supply chain and improve: lead time, transportation risks, customer service, risks associated with profitability, and order-fulfillment times.

The Business Challenge and Journey

Client background: One of the largest energy companies in the world operating in over 17 countries.

Client issue: The company recognized that there were single points of failure in the onshore and offshore ICT dependencies and infrastructure that could mean a loss of critical services for many weeks. As a result, they wanted to devise recovery strategies and plans to understand the exposures and requirements of the business.

To help the client devise recovery strategies and plans across their business units, the supply chain risk assessment experts at SpendEdge conducted comprehensive research and carried out discussions with prominent stakeholders in the global energy sector.

Client journey: The client undertook a risk assessment study to understand all potential single points of failure and to identify risk controls and solutions that would reduce the likelihood of disruption or minimize the impact. The client also drafted a programme of activity that ensured all pre-incident actions were taken to implement practical solutions, as well as producing comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans detailing all post-incident actions and information to ensure response and recovery would be controlled.

Key questions answered in this supply chain risk assessment engagement

The Results

With the help of SpendEdge’s supply chain risk assessment engagement, the energy sector client allocated recovery times to all critical activities, coupled with the identification of all resource requirements and minimum requirements.

To know more about our supply chain risk assessment solutions for energy sector firms

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