In the current capital-constrained environment, an area of potential value is the release of operating capital locked in inventories.
“From discussions with many of our customers in Oman over this last year, it’s clear that a powerful vision exists to improve capital efficiency within Oman’s oil and gas supply chain,” observed Matthew Bishop, Managing Director of Worley Oman.
This vision was shared by other customers globally, and so for Worley, it was time to rethink how it did procurement. Inspired by online consumer platforms, Worley and Advisian Digital set out to make its procurement process more efficient by creating an online marketplace for the energy and resources industry. In collaboration with 6fusion, we developed Requis, an online supply chain and commerce platform built for supply chain professionals to buy, manage, and sell enterprise material and equipment.
In a similar way that eBay has revolutionized the consumer supply chain by connecting consumers with other consumers, Requis is set to change the face and pace of procurement in energy and resources as different industries can collaborate in new and innovative ways.
“When we launched Requis, the vision was that it would help break silos between industries and enable people to work collaboratively instead of side by side,” explains Ross McPherson, Director of Operations, Requis. “Sharing inventory on Requis can allow upstream oil and gas companies to connect to downstream or petrochemical companies who they wouldn’t normally interact with. The platform could also enable utility providers to share resources and critical parts in a transparent and traceable way based on their regions. And we’re pleased to report that Requis does exactly that.”
The Requis platform enables operators to better understand their inventory, to categorize assets and gain access to local and international markets for disposal of surplus, or for better internal utilization.
The platform empowers buyers with superior datasets and transparent pricing, removing any uncertainty. And all assets listed on the Requis platform are certified, so customers know where the items are coming from, but at a fraction of the price of procuring new equipment and materials. From a seller’s point of view, it’s a win/win situation in that companies need to dispose of their surplus material anyway but do so often at a big loss.
“We’ve seen Requis help companies recover five, ten or twenty times more value than the traditional way of managing surplus material. Further benefits are achieved by eliminating costs related to scrapping or on-going storage,” says Andy Pottage, Location Procurement Manager, Worley. “And it’s the same with spares, why do operators have high spares inventory? Are they over purchasing or provisioning due to lack of data? Through Requis, operators can better understand their excess and surplus and how they can optimize that”.
Requis also removes the sometimes manual and lengthy procurement processes by streamlining and digitizing the time-consuming transactional side of procurement. And for suppliers, it enables them to list and move inventory through a more efficient process and to a wider market.
When asked to summarize Requis in three words, Alan Dunning, Co-creator of Requis and Procurement and Contracts Manager, Worley, chose ‘Efficient. Empowering. Intuitive’. He says, “Requis is efficient because it handles the standard processes efficiently, it is empowering because it enables procurement professionals to use their wider skills to add more value, and it is intuitive because you do not need days of expensive training to understand it. It is as simple as eBay to navigate, search, buy and sell. And the Requis team are always on hand to offer support.”
But the Requis vision doesn’t stop with oil and gas and it doesn’t end with buying and selling. The vision is to become the central nexus for all activity in creating or disposing of any industrial product – efficiently managing the lifecycle of the assets that run the business. Requis currently has five tier 1 operators registered or committed to using Requis.