79% of engineering, procurement and construction service providers in survey have deployed a control tower but less than half reaping rewards
Accenture survey says only 34% have reduced equipment and material costs
New global research from Accenture has found that many companies are struggling to get the most out of the technology they have deployed to support their supply chains.
In the research of more than 700 senior executives globally, 79% of the engineering, procurement and construction service providers deploy logistics control tower for logistics tracking, materials management, warehousing and people logistics. However, just 34% have been able to reduce equipment and material cost.
These discrepancies between the investment from companies and the lacking results continued, with 75-89% of the owner-operators and EPCs using data, data-driven insights and digital applications to better mitigate risk and increase project efficiency or execution, but only 32-44% achieving their set goals.
The reasons look to be a strategic failure to build the right operating environment and incentive to create a data-centric culture, plus an inability to operationalise data and technology.
The research found that 24% of owner-operators and 14% of EPCs exceeded their industry peers in terms of productivity and efficiency. The report also identified four differentiated actions that these outperforming companies have taken which, if adopted, can drive an additional 6.6% return on capital investment for owner-operators and grow EPCs’ operating margin by an additional 5.8%. These were as follows:
1. A data committed C-Suite. Fifty-seven percent of outperforming owner-operators and 60% of outperforming EPCs make a top senior executive (such as the CEO or COO) responsible for data-driven digitisation of capital projects. They also looked to have infused a culture of data-sharing for informed collaboration within their organisations, and across partners and value chains.
2. Data sharing infrastructure and capabilities. Cloud platforms, data lakes, drones and reality capture are top technologies in which outperforming owner-operators invested in the past five years. EPC outperformers spent heavily on industrial IoT technologies to make supply chains more intelligent and predictive, as an example.
3. Data-centric talent. Owner-operators identified data stewards to use data for schedule management, productivity and regulatory issues. Outperforming EPCs used digital coaches who work closely with the workforce to help them execute projects and deliver outcomes with more efficiency, safety and certainty.
4. Incentive-based contracts. Over 20% of the outperformers engage in contracts that incentivise project stakeholders to achieve financial, environmental and social responsibility goals. These focus on data-driven solutions and advances analytics to drive joint success.
“Compared to other industrial sectors, many owner-operators and EPCs were already trailing behind in digital transformation when sudden shutdowns and delays challenged their efficiency and competitiveness even further,” said Tracey Countryman, global lead for Digital Manufacturing & Operations, Accenture Industry X. “To build greater resiliency, mitigate current and future disruption, and drive more value from capital projects execution, companies need to adopt greater data-driven digitization within and across their value chains.”