Shawna Travis, a CP Specialist, Process System at Shell, started her career in 1996 as an SAP Training Coordinator/ Planner & Scheduler. For the next 15 years, she has implemented SAP and six separate upgrades for two different companies. After her last implementation, she took on a Process Expert Role and has focused on process improvements and automation. She continues to work as a Business Process expert focusing on the end to end solutions and enhancements.
Shawna spoke at SAP-Centric Supply Chain 2017 on Vendor Managed Inventory for Greater Automation & Cost Savings – a project she is incredibly passionate about and affectionately refers to as “her baby!”
Q: Tell us about your background and your role as a Business Process Expert at Shell Canada Energy.
A: I have been a BPE for the past five years. I’ve been given many opportunities to look at different projects for improvement and see what we can do within SAP to assist with our return on investment. I have been involved with many quick win projects, and account receivables clean-up initiatives. I have been a subject matter expert in many roles and different solutions we have implemented such as ERS, Auto PO, and punch out.
Q: What do you love most about your role?
A: I love the challenges and new ideas that come with my role. I get the opportunity to look at future ways of doing things better and interacting with so many people to hear new ideas, and taking the good ideas and implementing them. The second-best thing about my role is watching the success happen.
Q: Why do you think you were able to lead the procurement team to reach such high level of success?
A: Communication is key, and working alongside the folks whose process was changing took a lot of listening to their concerns and listening to how the day-to-day actually worked. I needed to invest the time and walk beside them and see their struggles. I often asked them how can we fix this and I listened to them. We would take the comments and feedback and see how we could make it work within the system. Once we had the final decisions on how the new process was going to work, it was rolled out and followed day-to-day, side-by-side with the folks that were using it and the ones who needed to change. I gave them priority support and addressed as many concerns quickly. I had to build their trust in me for them to trust the new process and new processes that were to come.
Q: How did you go about identifying inefficiencies?
A: The inefficiencies were very clear when we integrated with SAP. I had an SAP background from previous employment and knew that we could streamline some of our processes to eliminate a manual paper process. Another identifier was to listen to what the business was telling us they wanted more of from the system. We started considering the process and tweaking what we could to make it better. We had to identify all the potential inefficiencies and prioritize them, work on and roll out the ones that made the best sense for the company.
Q: What impact did the project have on the business?
A: A huge impact, we took this part of the business process to a new level by improving the material ordering, tracking, and delivery. We improved our payment turnarounds to vendors, we streamlined the process to have less downtime and more time on tools. We effectively removed a paper-based process and moved it into the electronic world through SAP.
Q: What’s next on the horizon for you at Shell Canada Energy – what’s the next big project you are looking to tackle?
A: I am looking to be part of the Ariba rollout Shell is doing, and working with more of our larger vendors to get them to the punchout B2B solutions that we currently have with this project.
Q: What is the biggest trend in the supply chain space that you see coming?
A: I see more online visibility for our end-users of where their material is in the process, allowing them to plan and schedule better. Flexibility in ordering the right material at the right time for the right cost is next.
Q: Why should attendees come to your session at SAP-Centric Supply Chain?
A: What we did is interesting, and to me, it’s very fascinating how we took such a high-volume vendor, built in trust on both sides of our company to allow the system to do most of our work, instead of the manual ways it used to be done.
Shawna Travis
Business Process Expert, Shell Canada Energy
