Expense processing standardisation for Harbour Energy with SAP Signavio

"Having specialists who purely focus on transformation and process improvement as their core competency brings a lot of value, in terms of speed, responsiveness, and real intimacy with the business. Don't be worried about having to manage another partner in your transformation journey. That incremental addition can bring a huge amount of value." - Graham Young 

35%

Savings identified across annual expense processing costs

7 Countries

Travel, expense, and card processes reviewed and standardised

3 Months

Project completed within a focused delivery timeline

Background

Harbour Energy is one of the world’s largest independent oil and gas companies, operating across multiple regions globally. The organisation needed to improve and standardise its expense, travel, and card processes across seven countries to reduce inefficiencies and create a stronger foundation for future automation and optimisation initiatives.

Challenges and Opportunities

Harbour Energy’s existing expense processing landscape was fragmented and inconsistent across regions. This created excessive handoffs, high levels of manual effort, and long cycle times.

The organisation also had limited visibility into process cost, effort, and performance, making it difficult to support standardisation efforts or build a credible business case for automation, AI, or outsourcing opportunities.

Scope

  • System: SAP Concur
  • Function: Travel & Expense Management
  • Countries: 7

Our Approach

bpmd used three lenses to assess Harbour Energy’s travel, expense, and card processing activities across regions:

  • Quantitative: Process Mining & System Data – Using SAP Signavio, bpmd analysed transaction-level data to identify where processes were slow, inconsistent, or breaking down across business units.
  • Qualitative: Business Unit Engagement – Conversations with business unit representatives gave context to the data, uncovering pain points, workarounds, and regional differences that the numbers alone couldn’t show.
  • Industry: Benchmarking & Best Practice – bpmd drew on knowledge of current trends and technologies in travel and expense management to understand what good looks like and where Harbour Energy had room to improve.


Together, these lenses enabled bpmd to design a simple, scalable, and modern expense process fit for Harbour Energy’s needs.

Results

  • Identified $1.5 million in potential savings.
  • Equivalent to approximately 35% of annual expense processing costs.
  • Improved visibility into process performance and operational inefficiencies.
  • Standardised travel, expense, and card processes across seven countries.
  • Established a stronger foundation for future automation, outsourcing, and continuous improvement initiatives.
  • Enabled a more scalable, AI-ready process landscape designed to support modern technologies and future digital transformation initiatives.