BW Group - a global maritime group specialising in shipping, floating gas infrastructure and deepwater oil and gas production - housed a traditional IT house before Tiong Kee Yong joined in April 2015.

Systems remained on-premises and supported by bare-minimum maintenance, with the IT department in “fire-fighting mode” against demanding business users.

Following a thorough and detailed review of the company’s technology portfolio, backed by robust discussions at boardroom level, Kee Yong defined a “cloud-first” strategy for BW Group.

Firstly, he restructured the IT department to become more business-focused, reshaping core capabilities with stakeholder buy-in to elevate technical knowledge across cloud, IT service management and cyber security. These initial steps kick-started the process of BW Group becoming a “leaner and more agile” organisation.

Secondly, Kee Yong created and executed a business aligned technology roadmap to address three core pillars, spanning common site infrastructure (CSI); communications and collaboration (C&C) and integrated systems platform (ISP).

Specifically, CSI leverages a hybrid on-premises and cloud stack with the aim to deliver secured anyway, anytime, any device access to information, designed to enhance flexibility while minimising financial risks.

Meanwhile, C&C transitioned the company’s legacy Lotus Notes platform to Office 365, significantly improving collaboration in creating and sharing information as a result.

Rounding off the innovation change, ISP was created as a digital platform with defined interfaces enabling common data definitions and key information flow across the planning revenue - fulfilment - settlement value chain.

The continuous migration from on-premises applications to software-as-A-service applications has also enabled different business units to accelerate unique strategies and growth aspirations, while maintaining a common architecture.

Key benefits include standardised IT processes, prioritised business requirements with agreed benefits and outcomes; cost effective integrated systems to deliver end-to-end visibility on revenue and maximised IT resources focused on strategic value-add projects.