Software AG > Case Studies > Baker Hughes Drills into Webmethods to Reduce Process Time and Costs

Baker Hughes Drills into Webmethods to Reduce Process Time and Costs

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America
Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East

Country

United States

Product

webMethods BPMS
webMethods Optimize for SAP
webMethods Optimize for Infrastructure
webMethods Integration Server
webMethods Trading Networks

Tech Stack

SAP ERP
Business Process Management (BPM)
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Analytics & Modeling - Process Analytics

Applicable Industries

Oil & Gas

Applicable Functions

Procurement

Use Cases

Process Control & Optimization
Predictive Maintenance

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Baker Hughes is a leading oilfield service company that provides the worldwide oil and natural gas industry with products and services for drilling, formation evaluation, completion, and production. The company is based in Houston, Texas, U.S., and operates in more than 90 countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Russia Caspian, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. With more than 34,000 employees, Baker Hughes is known for its collaborative approach to business, listening to its clients to understand their unique challenges and then developing solutions to help them manage expenses, maximize assets, and achieve a good return on investment.

The Challenge

Baker Hughes, a top-tier oilfield service company, wanted to optimize its Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process to improve invoice accuracy, minimize delivery delays, and reduce late payments. The company needed a world-class Business Process Management (BPM) solution to increase process agility, visibility, and control. The company was looking for a solution that could provide real-time metrics and alerts for process abnormalities, reduce invoice errors and payment delinquency rates, and save costs on every invoice.

The Solution

Baker Hughes built on its investment in the webMethods integration platform by adding webMethods BPMS to gain new efficient capabilities for process modeling and execution. The company used webMethods Optimize for SAP to create a real-time dashboard to proactively monitor P2P activities, end-to-end, across different systems. By adding Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) with webMethods Optimize for SAP, Baker Hughes gained 'business process instrumentation,' allowing management to measure workflow performance and then improve processes. The company also used webMethods Trading Networks as a single B2B gateway with suppliers and clients.

Operational Impact

P2P process now faster, traceable and paperless
Improved process visibility and better supplier relationships
Continuous process improvement, thanks to tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Real-time metrics for the first time
Digitized invoices get all parties 'on the same page' because they share access to the same digitized invoice with the same figures and details

Quantitative Benefit

Reduced invoicing costs—Baker Hughes saves $5-6 on every bill
Reduced invoice errors—in one instance, an erroneous $40 million invoice was identified and corrected to $40,000 in minutes
Reduced payment delinquency rates