I overheard a conversation today that concluded that there was no role for the global functions in Houston. Is this what others are hearing?
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That's what they said in our town halls, but they were very inconsistant about what exactly that meant. It almost sounded like IT would have greater central role than now. No mention of global procurement and supply chain.
I heard a handful of "townhall" meetings at various levels of the past couple of months. I thought the message was pretty clear that they would be decentralizing the company.
Other Global Functions not required in an Independent: Global Exploration, Global Wells, Global Chiefs etc.
Anyone heard anything about global procurement?
Well, I can speak from experience. I work in IT and know that at least in my group there are relatively few of us maintaining a very large and complex internetwork. We are swamped with daily tasks: troubleshooting, refreshes, and general maintenance. On top of that we work projects to expand and contract the network as needed. We are a drop in the bucket as far as what we cost the company and unfortunately for many we negate the need for more personnel at remote sites because of the automation we provide. Are there groups that are bloated and could be trimmed, of course there are, but everyone's daily work is directly affected by how good or bad we are in my group. Nobody notices us until something goes wrong and I am pretty sure we wouldn't be missed until something major happens and the outsourcing company isn't responsive and the network is down for hours instead of minutes. If you don't work in IT it is something that most can't understand. There is a reason why a good IT person is paid so well, and I am not talking about the guy who comes out to replace a keyboard or mouse.
Williams took that route and the initial financial savings was substantial. Best idea for an IT organization, no; but in light of the financial situation similar actions are financially prudent.
I have seen it before, a company thinks they can save money by outsourcing and then finds themselves without any capable personnel, then they are at the mercy of the outsourcing company and finds out they screwed up. If they do that they deserve what they get.
Nothing new under the sun. Outsourcing IT is old hat. Huge financial benefits (initially).
True they can host services but how do expect them to reach those services? Your computer doesn't reach those interwebs magically!
IBM Global Systems can step in without notice. IBM Global Systems has offices and staff in both Houston and Tulsa. The staff would transfer to IBM and work in Houston or Tulsa in the interim. The initiatives such as Office 365 and cloud better stage IT for outsourcing. Move everyone to Office 365 and the existing Exchange staff serves no purpose, as an example.
Accounting for gas & oil settlements has to be done someplace.
IT is a global function and they can't do away with that.
In a non centralized organization with the business units independent of corporate management no role exists for the global shared services, be in in Houston or Bartlesville.