SearchSABIC’s Digital Transformation Journey
The development of digital capabilities is essential for businesses to compete and grow as the world moves towards a digital economy.
Against this background, the global petrochemicals industry is also accelerating its adoption of digitalization. In a recent report, 80% of companies interviewed across 9 countries confirmed they have invested or are planning to invest in emerging digital technologies.
At SABIC, we were quick to recognize the enormous potential of digitalization and the power of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Our Corporate Digitalization Program (CDP), created in 2019, is specifically aimed at digitalizing key parts of our business – driving greater productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness across diverse areas, while enhancing our ability to meet the needs of our customers.
DRIVING DIGITALIZATION
Our digitalization journey began in 2019, with the design and roll-out of a five-year digital transformation strategy seeking to transform core business areas and functions within SABIC – including Manufacturing, Petrochemicals, Agri-nutrients, Technology & Innovation (T&I), HR, and Finance, among many others.
Due to the central role it plays within SABIC, Manufacturing presented one of the earliest opportunities to embrace digital and take asset optimization to the next level.
Environment, Health, Safety and Security (EHSS) is another area integral to our culture where digitalization has the potential to take our performance to new heights. Technology, especially data and the accessibility of analytics and visualization tools, will make us even more proactive by delivering deep insights that not only mitigate potential EHSS risks - but raise the bar. The value that digitalization can have here is immense, especially when considering that EHSS performance has become a competitive differentiator today with customers, regulators and investors around the world.
Our digital future certainly looks promising – with multiple digitalization pilots underway across diverse areas of the business. One example of how our petrochemicals business is leveraging AI is by using it to gain deeper insights into price and demand forecasting. Similarly, digitalization is transforming how we approach Procurement. One way it is achieving this is by improving our forecasting accuracy with regard to raw material expenditure, among other benefits.
THE JOURNEY AHEAD
As the journey towards digitalization continues, our CDP will continue to capitalize on the potential of digital technologies to create new value streams and drive growth across the SABIC global network. The program has already mapped our journey for the coming years as we continue to scale up and expand our successful digitalization pilots – while launching new ones.
Simply, our CDP is evolving SABIC to become more data-driven. Big data, coupled with predictive analytics, is opening the door for greater efficiency and accurate business decision making – while driving a fundamental advantage in the global competitive business environment. Across our global operations, we will continue to transform our business by advancing technology – and in doing so, improve our efficiencies, enhance our customer offerings and develop cutting-edge business models.
Within our Corporate Digitalization Program, we will continue embracing advanced solutions in the field of demand forecasting, deploy the latest technology to enhance the digital customer experience, and cultivate capabilities to boost process automation.
The SABIC example highlights only a few of the many benefits digitalization can deliver to the chemicals industry today. By opening the doors to functional excellence, disrupting end markets and creating new business models, digitalization is a substantial opportunity in the global chemicals industry – one that will take our business and ability to deliver Chemistry that matters™ to greater heights than ever.