The Challenge
A newly established downstream division within an oil and gas service company faced significant hurdles with its onboarding process. The division, primarily staffed with contractors, required efficient collaboration between operations, HR, legal, and finance to manage setup, compliance, and resource allocation effectively. Despite a dedicated software development team’s best efforts, the project struggled due to a limited understanding of the business requirements. The developers asked relevant questions but lacked the insights to anticipate the cross-departmental impacts. As a result, operations continued handling onboarding manually, delaying ramp-up timelines and straining the team’s resources. At this critical juncture, AI Advisory Group (AIAG) was brought in to evaluate and realign the project.
The Approach
AIAG’s approach began with comprehensively mapping all affected departments and identifying key stakeholders and their specific requirements. Recognizing that the original project assessment focused only on the operations team, AIAG extended the scope to include HR, legal, and finance, ensuring a holistic understanding of each department’s needs. This step was essential to identifying the true functional requirements of the onboarding system and clarifying interdependencies that had previously been overlooked.
AIAG quickly uncovered the underlying challenges impacting each area by facilitating in-depth discussions across departments and helped align their objectives with the software development team’s focus.
The Solution
AIAG’s solution centered on ensuring that the software aligned with the business requirements rather than forcing the business to conform to the software’s capabilities. Leveraging extensive experience in interdepartmental projects and cross-industry insights, AIAG rapidly assessed the situation and provided a clear roadmap for the development team. Within two weeks, AIAG reoriented the project, delivering a structured framework for collaboration and establishing a comprehensive onboarding system blueprint that could automate workflows across all involved departments.
Following this initial realignment, AIAG continued to work with the company part-time over the next six months, refining the system, addressing rollout adoption, and supporting deployment strategies that resonated with each team’s needs.
The Outcome
Through AIAG’s involvement, the project’s user base grew significantly. Initially intended for just 300 users, the onboarding system expanded to over 5,000 users within a year, seamlessly supporting contractors and full-time employees. All onboarding processes became automated, reducing manual effort and freeing valuable resources. Each department benefited from tailored process improvements, enabling greater efficiency and communication, which resulted in improved project momentum and quicker contractor ramp-up times.
Conclusion
AIAG’s intervention transformed a misaligned software project into a powerful, integrated onboarding solution that met the needs of a growing downstream division. By bridging gaps in understanding and facilitating cross-departmental collaboration, AIAG helped the software development team refocus and deliver a solution that fully supported the business. The project’s success demonstrated the value of interdepartmental alignment, resulting in a scalable, automated onboarding system that significantly boosted the division’s operational efficiency and long-term potential.
