One of the seven “Supermajor” oil companies in the world, the client is a giant French multinational oil and gas company. Along with covering entire oil and gas chain – including crude oil and natural gas exploration, production, power generation, transportation, refining, petroleum product marketing, and international crude oil and product trading- the client is one of the largest exporters of oil and gas products. A member of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), the client is known for strictly adhering to environmental rules and commitments.
Client Challenges
- The client was on the verge of a global level digitalization of all the processes and functionalities
- Recognizing the efficiency-boosting benefits of blockchain technology, the client wanted to have a blockchain pilot for supplier bank guarantees as part of their digitalization program
- Before implementing it worldwide, the client wished to facilitate a practical learning experience for all stakeholders to better understand the blockchain technology and its organizational and process impacts
- Also, the client expected a successful delivery of a blockchain pilot with objectives of reduced production time, enhanced security and increased automation in mind
However, the following challenges stood firmly in front of the client-
- Considering the state of infancy in which blockchain technology is still in, its visualization and implementation demand broad research and continuous learning
- Otherwise, the implementation generally fails in creating the layered technology architecture to deliver functional pilot requirements
- Due to the glaring inexperience of working with blockchain technology, the client was not able to figure out how to integrate it with the existing systems and strategies by pinpointing capabilities, structure and tool gaps
- Since the digitalization deadline was approaching, the client wanted to have a functional blockchain pilot within 4 weeks
Our Solutions
- As client didn’t just want us to build blockchain pilot but create a learning methodology for their employees, we understood that the solution should be inclusive of both the requirements
- We recommend a phased follow-up program to extend knowledge and learnings from the pilot, explore further use cases, create a blockchain/DLT Centre of Excellence and embed it into an overall digital strategy
Phase 1: Initial Innovation Workshop
It helped in –
- Ensuring a common business understanding of blockchain / Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)
- Defining a range of use case options
- Prioritizing and identifying one blockchain use case as a group for a pilot project
Phase 2: Solution Stack Definition
It comprised –
- Multi-step definition of business and technical requirements through detailed user stories, flow charts and creation of a wireframe to lay the foundation for development work
- Platform selection after a thorough assessment of business and technical considerations
Phase 3: Development Work
It included –
- Delivery of a blockchain pilot built on the Ethereum platform using Solidity Scripting language and Truffle development framework on the back-end
- HTML, CSS, web3.js for user-friendly browser visualization
