In 2008, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) purchased Petkim, Turkey’s only petrochemical producer. It was the first step in the creation of what is now known SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S. Today, SOCAR Turkey operates 13 subsidiaries, including a wind power plant, fiber optic lines, the largest container port in the Aegean region and a pipeline project that will one day carry natural gas to Turkey and beyond.
However, as the company’s portfolio has grown, the complexity of its business processes has increased exponentially. Over the years it has become increasingly difficult to monitor operations and documentation among SOCAR Turkey’s subsidiaries, each of which operates on its own platform.
Berna Gençoğlu, IT Project Management Office Group Manager at SOCAR Turkey, explains: “We needed a single, accurate way to view documents and systems for our entire organization. In looking for a platform to help transform our operations, we evaluated several solutions from different vendors. We chose IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation to consolidate our disparate systems on a unified platform with automated services.”
Cost reduction by automation
Automating business processes helps SOCAR Turkey reduce costs by USD 300,000 per year
Reduced carbon footprint
Digitizing contracts, correspondence and engineering documents saves 8,258 kg of carbon dioxide per year
SOCAR Turkey worked closely with IBM and IBM Business Partner AKSIS to implement the enterprise content management services available in the IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation solution. By carefully integrating the solution with SOCAR Turkey’s subsidiaries’ main enterprise business applications, the team established end-to-end integrated, automated and digitized processes throughout the entire organization.
The solution now automatically manages SOCAR Turkey’s corporate level documents from creation to archiving or disposal. SOCAR Turkey also uses the solution to classify information, develop dynamic folder structures and grant access to documents based on the organizational structure laid out in the company’s HR solution. Furthermore, the development team used the IBM solution to create processing standards that help manage compliance with international document management standards and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework.
All of SOCAR Turkey’s subsidiaries receive and process a large amount of correspondence every day, and the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation solution helps automate and manage these documents. Today, when a new piece of correspondence arrives at SOCAR Turkey, it is scanned and sent to the IBM solution, which applies a set of business rules to classify it and then creates a case number. Then, depending on the classification, the letter is either assigned to a case worker automatically or sent to a manager’s dashboard where it can be assigned manually.
As case workers review and respond to each case, the system tracks its progress, sending each new document to a security-rich content repository. Upon resolution, all the case’s documents are stored together in a searchable archive. In all, SOCAR Turkey has automated 3,000 correspondence processes.
SOCAR Turkey is using the IBM solution to handle internal and external contracts in a similar manner. By automating nearly 6,000 contract document management processes, SOCAR Turkey was able to accelerate, standardize and simplify contract management.
SOCAR Turkey’s engineering departments are also benefiting from the automation project. Much of the engineering documentation is generated by third party vendors, who can now use the solution to submit their deliverables to SOCAR Turkey. The solution’s automated workflow capabilities ensure that the documents reach the appropriate stakeholders in the company, where the documents can be reviewed, commented on and approved. “With IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, our stakeholders tell us that they no longer feel like they are working for the system. Rather, the system is working for them,” says Zehra Özcömert, Information and Records Group Manager at SOCAR Turkey.
Since implementing the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation software, SOCAR Turkey has migrated about 500,000 documents into the solution, and it has automated more than 14,000 processes. As a result, cycle time for documentation is down 20%–40%, employee productivity has increased 20%–30%, and client satisfaction has improved by 30%–50%. In addition, the organization has decreased the number of documents it must print and store, and it is better able to demonstrate its compliance with various regulations.
But perhaps the biggest improvements have been related to the solution’s financial and environmental impacts. “The solution saves SOCAR Turkey approximately USD 300,000 per year in paper, printing, postage, storage and administration, and it has reduced our carbon footprint by 8,028 kg of CO2,” Özcömert concludes.
SOCAR Turkey (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas companies. It began operations in Turkey in 2008, and today it operates 13 subsidiaries dedicated to producing, storing and delivering energy to more than 1.5 million customers. SOCAR Turkey is based in Istanbul, and it has over 5,000 employees.
Established in 1994, IBM Business Partner Aksis (link resides outside of ibm.com) focuses on helping organizations with enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. The company also offers electronic document and business process management systems, mobile solutions, image processing, robotic process automation and more. Its customers come from a wide variety of industries, including finance, automotive, pharmaceutical chemistry and government. Aksis is headquartered in Istanbul.
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