Accelerated Transformation of IT KMG International
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CASE STUDY KMG International Accelerated Transformation of IT 1 Learning From Experience: Problems Created by Full Outsourcing KMG International had been growing very fast in Romania and as a result the IT infrastructure was completely redesigned between 2005 and 2009. Over that period, however, IT costs ballooned. At its peak, the IT team swelled to 140 people who covered everything from development and testing through to day-to-day operations. Cost reduction in order to increase profitability of outsourcing company’s short-term revenues while the business became an imperative and so in 2010 exposing KMG International to high risks in the long the management team decided to restructure IT. term. For example, in 2011 there was a decision to stop Outsourcing the entire function seemed like a good paying license maintenance for critical applications proposal and so a contract was signed with an external — in order to bank a short term cost saving. However organization that had been set up to provide all without a valid maintenance contract in place it necessary IT services for KMG International. All the was impossible to escalate issues with software IT staff were transferred out and only one person providers and deploy upgrades. The risk of not having remained within KMG International as a contact point an escalation path for critical defects was added to for IT. The arrangements covered a flat fee plus change neglecting the software upgrade path for enterprise requests for any new projects. applications. In the long run, KMG International was compelled to renew the support and pay a However, the change requests were so numerous and hefty backlog of license maintenance, since critical complex that the overall IT costs for KMG International business applications cannot function without license actually went up rather than down. Furthermore the maintenance. outsourcing organization held more than 100 contracts with other technology providers in order to fulfill KMG KMG International Background International’s requests — adding further complexity and cost to the delivery process. KMG International N.V. (formerly known as The Rompetrol Group N.V.) is an international When a new management team took control of the oil company with operations in 12 countries business in 2012 they recognized that IT was a risk for throughout Europe, Central Asia and North Africa. The group is active primarily in refining, the business both operationally and financially. They marketing and trading, with additional operations wanted to find a new solution for IT in order to reduce in exploration and production, and other oil costs while improving the quality and range of services industry services such as drilling, EPCM, and provided. transportation. As of 2010, the group is entirely owned by NC It was evident that during the period of the KazMunayGas JSC, the national oil and gas outsourcing agreement IT operations had run out of company of the Republic of Kazakhstan. KMG control. Service level agreements were lax and the International owns the largest and most modern contracts did not really incentivize any improvement. refinery in Romania and the Black Sea region — Petromidia Navodari — which boasts a processing capacity of over five million tons per year. Change requests coming from the business received responses late with price quotations much higher than The company’s retail network that operates under the market. Contracts with third party suppliers were the “Rompetrol” brand incorporates over 1,100 fuel distribution points in Romania, Georgia, not done through a transparent tender process and Bulgaria, Moldova, and under the Dyneff brand didn’t necessarily reflect the best interests of KMG in France and Spain. The company employs over International. 7,500 people worldwide, of which around 6,000 are in its home market, Romania. Poor decisions were made in order to maximize the 2 A New Model for IT Efficiency KMG International management wanted to find a different solution. Having already experienced a full internal model followed by a fully outsourced model, KMG International moved to designing a hybrid model. Under this new design, certain functions mostly focused on strategy, governance and vendor management were held internally and most operational execution was outsourced. The main objective was to reassert control for IT within KMG International so that it could direct proactively the level of service that was needed and also manage costs more effectively. Today the Group IT function of 26 people covers the following areas: • IT Strategy • Vendor Management • IT Budget Management • Systems Architecture • Demand Management • Contract Management • Information Security • Project Management The team acts as a business partner to the business entities that form the group. They work with various business clients to define their requirements in terms of IT solutions and services, drive the approval and procurement processes, oversee the delivery of the projects executed by with external providers and coordinate the support activities. More recently the team also took on a business development role, proposing new solutions with strong business cases to companies and corporate functions in the group. On the operations side KMG International has a contract with SkyConsult for helpdesk, infrastructure and application support — and in turn they have an agreement with IPsoft for infrastructure support. KMG International also holds other similar agreements with various vendors to perform support tasks and provide other services. 3 Planning a Transition without Full Data Access Late in 2012, Marcel Chiriac engaged with KMG International’s senior management and acted as a consultant to SkyConsult in order to help shape the new organization model. He took over the CIO role formally in November 2012 moving from Vancouver back to his native Romania. At that point there were three people in Group IT. His initial task was to reduce the risk in IT operations 1. Deliver a smooth transition with no negative for KMG International — re-establishing an IT function business impact. that could be the business partner to the business 2. Build and implement a new hybrid model — units. Group IT would now have direct responsibility establishing a new relationship with vendors to to top management and be accountable for control restore control for IT within KMG International. over all vendors. As Marcel Chirac began to plan 3. Deliver a more financially efficient IT service. the transition to the new model he bore three key objectives in mind: The very first step in transitioning to the new model involved exploring the 100+ contracts that had been drawn up by the outsourcer in order to discover what they were delivering. New relationships needed to be put in place, contract terms needed to be renegotiated and in many instances contracts needed to be consolidated. For example, KMG International moved from having 38 telecoms contracts to just four. The proposed change was received with complete hostility by the outsourcing firm involved who proceeded to deny any information access to the new KMG International IT management, let alone knowledge transfer. “The entire transition to the new model was planned and managed in the same way as you might expect in a hostile takeover,” explains Marcel Chiriac. Most importantly the team worked to re-establish control of services. The layering of sub-contracts also meant that KMG International was unable to exert any authority over many of the sub-contractors. In one example, the new CIO was refused the administration passwords for the technology that was supplied to KMG International via the outsourcing company, as they had no direct relationship in place. 4 The Race to Cutover After arriving in November 2012, Marcel Chiriac had to mobilize his partners at record pace in order to take on operational responsibility for running all IT services by the contract cutover date on January 1, 2013. IPsoft played a critical role in supporting this transition With the clock ticking towards the cutover deadline, and the deployment of the IPcenter platform greatly the CIO’s combined team of 20 people made up of his facilitated information gathering of the IT operations skeleton internal team, the SkyConsult team and IPsoft, that were soon going to be transferred. IPsoft brought prepared themselves for the transfer of IT operations in a very experienced team of people to work on this supporting KMG International’s entire business. unique challenge. A core team came to Bucharest supported online by IPsoft operations teams in other The hostility of the incumbent provider continued global locations. In a very short time the team had to cause problems right down to the wire as many learned and understood the new IT environment. Using administration passwords had not been handed over. IPmons they were able to find out what was present It seemed as though the team would have to shut and make preparations to secure the infrastructure in down all servers and restart them on January 1st. With time for the looming cutover date. only a few days to go, however, on December 28th Marcel Chiriac managed to secure the handover of key Despite significant obstacles to progress, such as information that would allow the service to transfer only having a partial view of the network rather than over smoothly. full administration rights, a solid picture of the IT landscape was put in place. It covered the underlying details of: • 3 datacenters IPsoft was able to • Hundreds of servers (physical and virtual) find out what was • 3 virtualization environments present and make • 4000 users preparations to secure • 200 applications the infrastructure in • Network spanning many countries. time for the looming IPsoft carried out due diligence to manage all the cutover date underlying devices and integrated IPcenter with the other systems management tools that were in place. 3 100s 3 4000 200 datacenters of servers virtualization users applications (physical and environments virtual) 5 Cutover Success The strategy the team had put in place proved to be solid.