FMC Technologies

• case

IT Governance

FMC Technologies adheres to Cobit 4.0 to align technology processes to the company’s strategic plan. The technology behind this project was the Modulo Risk Management tool

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE practice made FMC Technologies' Brazilian subsidiary, which provides the market with infrastructure solutions for companies of the petroleum, gas and bio-fuels sector, to implement Cobit Governance model in the Information Technology area. This process involved an analysis of the existing systems to check to what extent IT was aligned to the company’s business objectives.

FMC Technologies has been operating in Brazil for half a century, delivering to giants like Petrobrás, Shell and Chevron highly sophisticated equipment, solutions that support petroleum exploration. The subsidiary is controlled by a group headquartered in Houston (USA) that employs 11,000 professionals in 32 factories dispersed in 17 countries. The head office is listed in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and has Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) certification.
To deliver secure managerial information and control the technology systems risks, last year FMC decided to implement IT Governance. For that, the company decided to adapt its computerized processes to Cobit’s best practices model (Control Objectives for Information and related Technologies). The adopted version of the tool was 4.0.

The necessary work for adjusting to Cobit demanded a solution to analyze IT systems, in this case Modulo Risk Manager, a Risk Management and Compliance software by Modulo. With this technology, FMC Technologies CIO, Pedro Sampaio says that the company managed to quickly assess all computerized processes to meet these objectives.

“The challenge was in finding the best solution for our reality. Risk analysis surfaces many needs which not always can be remedied at once due to budget constraints”, says Sampaio. The most appropriate action, according to the executive, was to prioritize the processes most critical for the business.

RESPONDING TO THE MARKET

The project dynamics at FMC Technologies is very intense, and requires close proximity between manufacturer and customer. “It’s the customer who determines how his project should be structured, and approves each step of the process, that lasts on average between 14 to 20 months. That’s why they remain at the organization during the development and production period”, affirms Sampaio.

Responsible for 9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the petroleum, gas and bio-fuels segment is extremely competitive. The section lives with the daily pressures of oscillation in prices and the world demand for energy. To operate in this market, FMC Technologies CIO says the company must have IT processes that respond quickly to business demands, and be extremely agile in decision making. Any delay is fatal for the corporation’s survival.

FMC do Brasil made the decision of implementing IT Governance practices, adapting its IT systems to Cobit standard by using of a Risk Management tool. According to Sampaio, this was not imposed by the head office. The initiative granted him added international projection. Another favorable point of the Corporate Governance project is that investors start looking at the company with more trust.