Shell

Global Perspective

Shell is reshaping its business to set us up to create new business models, new markets, and new customers for the low-carbon products we want to sell. This new organisation has a strong focus on helping customers decarbonise and is organised around the sectors in which we have customers, like aviation, shipping and heavy-duty road transport. We are building a simpler, more cost-effective organisation that can deliver on our ambition to be a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner.

IT also needed to become a simpler, leaner and more agile organisation, capable of delivering business value at speed.

Information, Data, and Analytics

In Shell, we have the tools/platforms, we have the people, we have enough data, we have the know-how to deliver yet there were opportunities to further maximise value. Demand for data, analytics and data science skills are in high demand, so we need to ensure they are deployed where they can deliver the most value for Shell and our customers. Part of our approach is to simplify the interfaces between Shell’s business teams and IT. We are further standardising our delivery approach to ensure that proof of concepts and minimum viable products can both be built quickly, but also scale quickly.

Our new organisation structure includes Business data solution teams and capability enhancement teams

The Business Data Solutions teams focus on developing and delivering E2E data solutions using our data platforms and integrate data engineering, data analysis and visualisation capabilities. The close connections with the business help to develop deep domain expertise in our teams, so we can better shape business demand and create more opportunities to drive actionable insights from data.

Our Capability Enhancement teams incubate, develop and mature new capabilities alongside our data solutions teams. With our focus on standards, best practices and supplier partnerships, we aim to maximise value generation with speed and agility.

Three years ago, Shell consolidated the bulk of its data science team within its technology research and development organisation. The team had the freedom to experiment with new technologies and rapidly deploy minimal viable products, with a target of 100 days weeks from scoping to the first deployment. This approach enabled us to develop specialists with deep expertise, invest in best-in-class platforms and technologies, and embed consistent delivery and governance frameworks that can be leveraged across all Shell’s businesses.

As our products mature, we see opportunities to streamline processes to scale solutions across Shell’s businesses. For this reason, we are now embedding data science professionals into information, data and analytics organisation, while keeping an additional team focused on cutting edge data science research and innovation.

Our data science and machine learning competency centre focus on delivering and supporting enterprise-grade data science solutions. They standardise and replicate solutions through best-in-class software engineering principles to ensure our products are robust, well maintained and can evolve as the needs of the customers change.

Business-specific data solution teams are a one-stop-shop for the technical delivery of capabilities for a business unit. Staff in these teams are working directly with their business colleagues and have deep technical, business and business data domain skills.