Fueled by the Data

A story of owning change

A leading energy company optimized their logistics with Microsoft Azure DevOps

woman in hard hat reviewing data on tablet with two other workers

Owning Change in Energy

Our customer, an American petroleum refining and transportation company, embarked on a logistical cost analysis of their hydrocarbon supply chain with a focus on movement and storage.

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The Challenge: Refine the Complex

Data Analytics and Insights to Make Intelligent Decisions

Our customer spends billions of dollars annually to transport and store both raw materials and finished products before they are sold. Complex monthly spreadsheets gave our customer limited insights into overall logistical cost optimization opportunities. They sought to gain better visibility into these costs to better understand how well they are managing them. Our customer wanted to leverage agile delivery practices, a new approach for them.

Our Solution: Driving Data Analytics

Optimizing with Microsoft Azure DevOps

Our customer shared their vision—create more visibility and reduce logistics costs. They turned to TEKsystems because of our long-standing relationship and delivery expertise. As a Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner, we were up for the challenge.

We deployed a new data platform in the Microsoft Azure cloud. We leveraged the latest services that could handle structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data—designed to support data growth over time and leveraged the power and flexibility of Azure Synapse. A key benefit: only implement what was needed giving our customer the flexibility to scale out when they used more.

We used systems such as SAP and SQL Server as sources for daily refreshes, while we used PowerBI as the interactive visualization interface for business users. With large volumes of daily data, they needed a service capable of moving large amounts of data—quickly. Azure Data Factory (ADF) provided a distributed system able to load data from on-premise systems, as well as other cloud sources, quickly and efficiently. To help manage and track the team’s day-to-day delivery, source control and automated deployments, we used the Azure DevOps services. A key benefit: providing transparency to all stakeholders and project sponsors.

Powerful Partnership: Going the Extra Mile

Improving Data Warehouse and Management

Working closely with our customer and their dedicated Microsoft data analytics architect, we implemented best practices and tailored the solution to exceed expectations. During the development and testing phases, we identified several bugs and worked with the client and Microsoft to fix and improve.

Real-World Results

Our customer established a centralized repository focused on logistical costs of the pipeline mode of transportation. They can now extract from various operational systems—integrated, standardized and presented in a consistent model that includes self-service reporting and business analytics.

The system leveraged a shared platform used by various business areas. The initial effort focused on the pipeline mode of transportation with other transport methods soon to follow. By designing and building a reusable platform, subsequent modes of transportation required a fraction of the initial effort and allowed our customer to make efficient use of Azure while reducing costs. Overall, our partnership led to increased savings by fully understanding logistical costs and the proper management of all assets.