Background

Aibel is a leading provider of EPCI services (Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Installation), delivering critical energy infrastructure across offshore oil and gas, electrification, and offshore wind. With 4,700 employees across Norway, Thailand, and Singapore, the company operates in a highly complex, project-driven environment where precision and coordination are essential.

At the core of this complexity is Aibel’s structure — three business lines delivering multiple concurrent projects. This requires not only strong execution locally, but the ability to connect information, decisions, and learnings across the organization. For the Supply Chain function, this created a clear opportunity: to scale value by making knowledge, agreements, and insights accessible across projects.

From digital tools to digital discipline

When Madhavi Vagle stepped into her role as Vice President Supply Chain Management, the focus was not on introducing new systems, but on unlocking the full potential of capabilities already in place. Digitalization was approached not as a transformation program, but as a shift toward alignment and execution discipline:

• Making existing tools work better for the business
• Ensuring procurement work is captured, shared, and reused
• Enabling teams to make better decisions, faster

This reframed digitalization from technology deployment to organizational enablement and value creation.

A strategy anchored in value creation

The transformation was guided by a clear supply chain strategy focused on:

• Stronger category management
• Improved visibility into managed spend
• Supplier qualification, performance, and compliance
• Sustainability across the supply chain
• Execution discipline supported by digital tools
• Most importantly, people and ways of working

Ignite, which was already established within Aibel’s procurement landscape, became the enabler of this ambition. The key shift was embedding the platform into daily workflows, making it the natural place where contract and supplier management work is captured, connected, and leveraged across projects.

Starting simple: contracts as a foundation for scale

To translate strategy into execution, Aibel deliberately started with a focused, simple, high-impact area: contract management. This reflected a core principle: simplicity drives adoption, and adoption drives value. By consistently storing contracts, NDAs, and terms in Ignite, Aibel established:

• A single source of truth
• Shared visibility across projects
• Reusability of negotiated agreements
• A stronger foundation for commercial and risk management

Rather than introducing new processes, the focus was on amplifying the value of existing work by making it accessible across the organization.

Driving adoption through clarity and experience

A critical success factor was the approach to adoption. Instead of heavy transformation programs, Aibel focused on:

• Clear expectations around usage
• Reinforcing business value
• Targeted retraining and engagement
• Leveraging Ignite’s intuitive user experience

This combination of clarity and simplicity made it easier for teams to integrate digital tools into their daily routines. As a result, Ignite evolved from a supporting system into an integral part of how we work.

Measurable progress through disciplined execution

Within less than a year, Aibel achieved significant, measurable improvements:

• Contract coverage increased to almost 90 percent, strengthening the commercial foundation across projects
• Spend data became largely structured and categorized, enabling better analysis and category management
• Supplier focus improved through a more streamlined and performance-driven supplier base
• Cross-project visibility enabled better reuse of agreements and insights

Ignite now serves as the central platform for contracts, supplier performance, compliance data, and cross-project insights, enabling a shift from fragmented information to connected, actionable intelligence.

Business impact

The transformation delivered tangible business value beyond operational improvements.

• Reduced commercial risk: Greater contract coverage ensures consistent terms and conditions, lowering exposure across projects
• Improved efficiency and speed: Easier access to agreements and supplier data reduces duplication and accelerates procurement cycles
• Stronger negotiation leverage: Visibility across projects enables better benchmarking of pricing and terms
• Increased value capture from suppliers: Structured supplier performance and data enable more strategic supplier management
• Foundation for future value creation: High-quality, connected data enables advanced analytics, category strategies, and commercial optimization

From foundation to commercial leverage

With a strong digital foundation in place, Aibel is now focused on leveraging data for greater commercial impact. Key priorities include:

• Enhancing visibility into payment terms
• Strengthening contract and supplier performance management
• Connecting category strategies, contracts, and value realization
• Further improving supplier compliance and governance

This marks the transition from digital enablement to value-driven procurement performance.

The key: digitalization starts with people

Aibel’s experience highlights a critical insight: Digital success is not driven by large-scale system changes, but by aligning People, Processes & Tools.

By making it simple for teams to do the right thing and reinforcing that behavior consistently, Aibel has transformed complexity into structure, and data into value.

Madhavi ends: “Digital transformation for Supply Chain at Aibel is not about adding more. It is about making the strong digital platforms we already have work better, together.”