PROJECT SINERGY A MONUMENTAL ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION

Author: Jorge A.S. Mattos PETROBRAS, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil BACKGROUND

The changes in the Brazilian Legislation for oil and gas that occurred on August 1997 have intensified Petrobras preparations to face the extremely competitive environment that is being created in Brazil. To overcome this challenge, the 2000-2010 Petrobras Strategic Plan has recommended the implementation of an Enterprise Resources Planning System.

WHAT IS PROJECT SINERGY ?

Project Sinergy, initiated on March 1999, is the biggest organizational transformation project taking place in Latin America. The magnitude of the proposed ERP System (SAP R/3) implementation exhibits considerable figures, such as training 15,000 employees, mobilizing 350 highly qualified Petrobras experts and over 150 external consultants, together with a challenging implementation schedule of 33 months. For this purpose, Petrobras is investing over US$ 200 millions and expects to receive over US$ 700 millions during a period of five years after the implementation. Already operational at Petrobras subsidiaries in Colombia and Bolivia, ERP System will be first used at Petrobras Distribuidora in October 2001. Its implementation will be concluded by the end of next year. The Project Sinergy also includes the creation of a SAP Competence Center to support all the knowledge obtained with the Petrobras SAP implementation. The inclusion of the Enterprise Buyers Professional EBP module in the projects scope will allow the utilization of its whole technical infrastructure to support the activities of e-procurement since its first implementation phase. By operating an information system that will process every information in real time and consolidate them a single data base, Petrobras will be inserted in the group of oil companies that already uses the e-business as one of its business success factors.