SOCAR Türkiye + Celonis

SOCAR Türkiye used manual reporting methods to enhance the efficiency of its logistics processes and improve operational visibility. However, a more comprehensive solution was needed to manage processes more quickly and effectively, optimize customs costs, and identify hidden bottlenecks. Celonis provided real-time process visibility, contributing to greater transparency and efficiency in operations.

Context: Hyperautomation at the heart of business value

The Turkish division of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) is home to some of the multinational oil and gas firm’s most significant global projects, with $18.3 billion in investments.

Their priority is to bring innovation and value to all processes. So they launched a hyperautomation strategy in 2019, aiming to tackle bottlenecks and resolve inefficiencies by integrating technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and process mining.

This led them to Celonis. The partnership began with a Procure to Pay pilot with Celonis in 2021, followed by a plant maintenance project in 2022 and Accounts Payable in 2023.

Next on the hyperautomation journey: SOCAR Türkiye’s Center of Excellence (CoE) team for process mining, led by Ezgi Türksoy, to take on their crude oil inbound logistics workflow.

Challenge: A lack of process visibility meant value was slipping away

SOCAR Türkiye’s inbound logistics processes cover everything from the moment an order is received by a customer to its arrival at a warehouse. Given the complexity of these processes, multiple steps and stages required deeper insights for optimization.

Without full visibility into how the process was running or where improvements could be made, identifying and addressing bottlenecks was challenging. While there were opportunities to enhance efficiency, gaining a clear understanding of their impact on process performance and costs required more in-depth information.

To gain these deeper insights, teams relied on manual reports to identify and address operational issues, which required significant time and effort.

Additionally, the involvement of multiple stakeholders made aligning and implementing process improvements more complex. Again, the dependence on manual efforts also posed challenges in maintaining operational efficiency.

Solution: Total transparency enables slick processes

Celonis created a process mining solution that enables Türksoy’s team to discover all their process bottlenecks. The CoE began with an observation phase where they triaged all of the inefficiencies within the process, then defined improvement actions, and finally implemented them.

For example, they diagnosed and fixed delays in supplier document sharing. Now, a seamless automated process allows suppliers to submit responses with the click of a button, after which the data is sent to the Celonis platform where the team can view it all centrally. From there, they can create supplier KPI dashboards, enabling easy, real-time monitoring of vendor performance.

KPI dashboards have also unlocked the potential to reduce SOCAR Türkiye’s high customs costs, pinpointing incorrect or delayed opening of purchase orders and the late provision of necessary documents.

The platform’s live, end-to-end transparency has also helped SOCAR Türkiye to improve the estimation of vessel ETAs and arrival notifications for multiple vessels. Planning errors have been cut as a result of real-time order tracking.

In six months, SOCAR Türkiye’s first successful hyperautomation initiative combining RPA and process mining, achieved $45,000 from optimizing their customs process, while operational efficiency amounted to 300 saved working hours per year.