Meeting the VUCA challenge Taking the right steps now ensures future success, says Ferhat Eryurt
In the world of VUCA – a term to describe volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, the outbreak of Covid-19 has puzzled business assumptions and certain believed paradigms.
The last year has been hard, but the good news is that by adopting effective strategies, every business can emerge stronger and fitter when life returns to normal.
The oil and gas sector has been badly hit, with the large oil majors facing sudden drops in demand, collapsing prices and an unpredictable future.
The size of the oil and gas giants gives them some builtin resilience based on long-term investment plans in exploration and production. But their suppliers face more serious problems. They are typically much smaller companies with perhaps as few as one customer to rely on for their survival. It means sudden shocks create particular challenges for them. They are especially vulnerable, and that in turn can create serious problems for their customers, the big corporations.
This is the time to hold your suppliers close and help them deal with the stress. The challenges created by the pandemic can be mitigated by your adoption of a collaborative approach offered by a supplier management system together with an effective supplier collaboration platform.
Risk can be reduced through the diversification of the supplier base and effective monitoring, creating better transparency and visibility. Adopting such measures will involve a review of business processes including financial processes, cash flow management and contract management, all producing a more efficient and effective operation.
Such approaches also help deal with another increasingly important factor in industry today – rising demands from shareholders, the customer base and governments for companies to reduce their environmental footprint. The pandemic has created unprecedented problems in the oil and gas industry, but also great opportunities.
By adopting the tools and techniques we at apsolut Group offer, you can reap the benefits when the good times return.
Ferhat Eryurt is a partner with apsolut Group apsolut Group specialises in advanced processes and solutions focusing on the design, implementation and roll-out of solutions and programmes for strategic and operational procurement.
We are based in Germany with operations in several European countries, China and India. apsolut is a long-established SAP & SAP Ariba partner.
