Facing the risk of becoming a commodity in a competitive environment, Vallourec is embracing innovation to create and monetize new digital services. In partnership with Bengs, Vallourec has experimented a new approach to quickly test and develop innovations to generate new revenues for the group.
Smartengo is born: Vallourec’s e-commerce platform for the Oil & Gas industry
In a complicated industrial environment, Vallourec has decided to follow-up a strategy of revenue diversification by developing new data driven services to complete its traditional pipe core business.
The challenge was big for Vallourec to move from V-shaped development cycle spread over many years to develop new pipes grades or connections to a start-up like innovation cycle of a few months to create disruptive services.
With the “Digital Booster”, Bengs & Vallourec have created a dedicated structure to help intrapreneurs break internal barriers, establish a conquering mindset and follow a new disruptive innovation methodology.
Among 4 concepts of services tested, the 3 most promising have been selected to be further developed and scaled:
- Smartengo Best Fit: “Augment” your workers on the field to secure and optimize line pipe welding assembly operations”
- Smartengo Running Expert: “Enhance your Casing & Tubing running operations”
- Smartengo Inventory: “Enhance yard operation, towards full stock visibility!”
200M€ additional revenues expected by 2024
Results are amazing after only 18 weeks: customers were convinced and on-boarded, intrapreneurs were enthusiastic and top-management thrilled. With a strong customer-focus and teams’ autonomy, Vallourec’s intrapreneurs have managed to overcome their own limits, to demonstrate their product feasibility and to generate revenues for the company.
By deploying a conquering mindset, Vallourec is extending its customers base by addressing new markets outside its traditional core-business, both inside and outside the Oil & Gas industry. Stakes are twofold:
- Generate new business drivers
- Mitigate risks through customer diversification
In less than a year, proven results have been demonstrated:
- Dozens of customers have been contacted to validate market fit
- Over a million euros of additional revenues are secured for the group.
In addition to the latter 3 projects, 5 new projects are now under development following-up the same methodology. Global business ambition for those new services is to generate a couple hundred million euros of additional revenues by 2024.
The Digital Booster comes along with a deep organisational and managerial transformation for Vallourec
Collaboration is not that natural! In the “Digital Booster”, an efficient governance along with collective goodwill demonstrate the power of combined intelligence all through the innovation process:
- Experts, researchers, entrepreneurs, business developers, gathered in one place, accept to validate an ambition through a non-perfect prototype displayed to the largest number.
- Feedback, challenges and expectations enable the teams to improve their offers and maximise their value proposition.
- Weekly routines allow teams to focus on actions over reporting, to accelerate the deployment of the solution and to gather enough proofs for a fast and well thought scale-up.
Through this digital booster, the commitment of all stakeholders (employees, internal sponsors, partners) has become a must-have for any transformation at Vallourec.
