With the support of Nexllence’s innovative solutions – powered by Glintt – Companhia Logística de Combustíveis S.A. is closer to leading a more digital future.
The acceleration of digitalization has now made it possible for organizations to make decisions based on comprehensive, near-instantly updated information. All of this happens automatically, freeing people from repetitive tasks and giving them more time to plan and make the best decisions for their businesses.
JE Lab spoke with José Eduardo Sequeira Nunes, Managing Director of Companhia Logística de Combustíveis (CLC), a fuel logistics company that supplies the entire central region of the country, including the greater Lisbon area.
The Digitalization Challenge
CLC is responsible for the transportation, storage, filling and dispatch of petroleum products, between the Sines multi-product pipeline and Aveiras de Cima. Despite being a company with a strong technological component, there was a set of important processes that required specific industry knowledge and were carried out relying on workers’ experience and Excel formulas.
As José Eduardo Sequeira Nunes, CLC’s Managing Director, explains, it was necessary “to optimize the entire process, from transportation in Sines through to storage and dispatch activities in Aveiras.”
The challenge was clear: how to translate a complex and highly specific operation, based on workers’ empirical knowledge, into an automated digital process, eliminating redundancies, automating processes and speeding up decision-making? In other words, “how to put into the machine what the person is thinking,” as Sequeira Nunes puts it, for whom the goal was “to rely on innovative solutions in order to optimize the entire process.”
If you want to go far, go together…
Such a complex project, which in CLC’s case included, according to Sequeira Nunes, “using information generated by operational systems with workflows and automation wherever possible, and, by leveraging operational movements, achieving greater connectivity between processes.”
In order to find technological solutions that would meet the business’s challenges, CLC chose Nexllence, Glintt’s technology consulting division, whose mission is to help organizations meet the challenges of Digital Transformation and maximize their business potential through innovative solutions.
José Eduardo explains that “Nexllence knew how to overcome the problems encountered, involving management and constantly searching for solutions,” a skill highly valued by CLC’s management team. He also notes that, given “the shortage of specialized technology resources, they knew how to retain the necessary resources and manage coordination well with CLC’s various managers,” in order to achieve the best results and turn the final project into a success story.
The project involved a lot of mathematics, many algorithms, and several steps forward and back before finding the solution best suited to CLC’s business. According to CLC’s director, Nexllence’s willingness to always search for the best solution for the project — despite being “more painstaking” than initially expected — “was something that left a mark.”
Information, when it arrives on time, is worth gold.
According to Sequeira Nunes, this was, above all, a process of operational excellence. Duplicate work was eliminated, and knowledge held by people — the more experienced ones — was incorporated “into algorithms and systems, eliminating critical dependencies.” Another area they felt was improved relates to streamlining communication between departments — now handled through digital processes — which requires “less administrative effort” and [the ability to obtain] “information earlier and of better quality, with more detailed and quickly accessible calculations.”
“We had information that wasn’t being processed. It’s like having a pile of gold on the table and not using that gold.” Today, following this transformation, it’s now possible to retrieve information at its source, make full and timely use of all data, and thereby make better decisions. “Information that arrives on time is valuable; information that arrives late is worthless.”
Looking Ahead
The platform built by Nexllence, based on OutSystems technology, has allowed CLC to collect and use real-time information about its operations. As Sequeira Nunes put it, “We started driving while looking ahead, instead of at the rearview mirror.“
The ability to collect and process large amounts of data in a timely manner is probably the most important step for companies looking to evolve their business. Finding the right partner to navigate technological complexity is thus one of the major challenges organizations must face as they continue their ongoing digital transformation.
Source: Jornal Económico
