A cloud-based solution to rescue millions from energy poverty

British-based Savannah Energy operates on a simple principle: Financial poverty and energy poverty are intertwined.

Therefore, the company reasons, by generating clean, competitively priced electricity for millions of households in Africa, hardship can be replaced with socio-economic prosperity.

Given the realities on the ground, though, this objective is not as simple as it sounds.

For instance, only 56 percent of the African population has access to electricity – 41 percent if South Africa, Algeria, and Egypt are excluded from the equation. Consequently, the countries the company serves rank among the lowest on the United Nations Human Development Index.

In its quest to alter this picture, Savannah Energy would need a solid, cloud-based platform to manage organizational change as it transformed its business – as well as the nations where it operates.

But as the decade began, the independent energy company was unable to integrate its 10 disjointed systems handling finance, supply chain, human resources (HR), and plant maintenance.

And that was just part of the operational challenge. The lack of centralized data also limited the speed with which management could make important decisions.

The company had no choice but to change its way of working – putting data and efficiency first and deploying the new solution quickly.

Transforming the continent

With a controlling interest in numerous large-scale, integrated gas production and distribution operations, Savannah Energy PLC is active in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. 

The company is known not just for hydrocarbon activities; it has a division specifically devoted to initiating utility-scale renewable energy projects. 

As the company was conceptualizing its new platform, it set the back-office objective of achieving a 20 percent productivity increase in HR by automating the recruitment, onboarding, and approvals processes.

But first, Savannah Energy needed a reliable participating partner to help shape its digitalization vision, turning to Irish professional services company Accenture, which has provided information technology and consulting assistance to more than 200 oil and gas clients. 

Including enterprise resource planning (ERP) software leader SAP in the planning seemed like a natural decision, since the German-based multinational’s oil and gas clients manage a total of 78 million barrels a day.

Additionally, there are SAP solutions for pre-configured best practices, along with other deep, industry-specific capabilities.

Within the suite of technologies included in the new solution would be SAP S/4HANA, an ERP software frequently favored by large enterprises, and Success Factors, which provides cloud-based software for human capital management (HCM) – developed specifically to help organizations hire the most qualified employees, manage workforces, and optimize productivity – using the Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model.

By integrating SAP with non-SAP systems, Savannah Energy’s planning, budgeting, forecasting, and re-forecasting proficiency tools would be unlike anything the organization ever had in the past.

Fueling development – and growth

Remarkably, it took just seven months for Savannah Energy to automate close to 50 business processes and develop its platform, launching it in January 2022.

Now fully confident in the company’s data accuracy, senior management can make decisions by using analytics to visualize information across the entire organization.

With details instantly available via user-friendly systems and mobile apps, the dependence on IT has been greatly diminished.

Because of these efforts, the company reports a 60 percent reduction in paper needed to chronicle the detection of and response to incidents that can have a financial or operational impact or inflict other damage.

Overall, the enhanced ability to analyze real-time data has increased the company’s awareness of potential dangers by 70 percent, while production downtime resulting from equipment breakdowns lessened by 30 percent.

Meanwhile, the time required for the purchase to pay process has been reduced by at least a week.

Chris Grubb, the company’s head of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), described “a safer workplace, controlling hazards and risks, and staying compliant with regulatory requirements.” 

More than ever before, Savannah Energy is in a position to recruit, develop, and retain the best talent while adhering to a framework of environmentally centric policies, procedures, processes, and controls.

“Real-time analytics are empowering our staff to explore new opportunities,” noted the company’s CIO, Jason Wilkins. “We are fueling our growth and becoming a more intelligent, sustainable organization.”

For accomplishing all of the above, Savannah Energy received a distinct honor, being designated the oil and gas “Transformation Titan” winner at the decade-old SAP Innovation Awards in 2023. 

The annual ceremony singles out organizations using SAP technologies to transform industries as well as society. You can read more about what Savannah Energy accomplished to earn this top honor in their pitch deck.