The following partner insight was authored by Robert Stephens, Principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); he is focused on delivering technology innovation for the energy industry.
In oil and gas, a system outage that might inconvenience a retailer can jeopardize safety, stall production, and ripple through global markets. Against that backdrop, ConocoPhillips approached its SAP S/4HANA transformation with discipline, a tightly defined scope, and a commitment to fit-to-standard as guiding principles.
Rising IT costs had already placed the company at a disadvantage, while SAP’s shifting timeline for SAP ECC retirement, first 2020, then 2025, and ultimately 2027, made the delay untenable. In 2021, ConocoPhillips committed to act. Request for Proposals (RFPs) had gone out the previous year, vendors were selected, and the program launched in September with a mandate to help reduce cost to serve, dismantle decades of customization, and establish a foundation ready for cloud growth.
With the program underway, ConocoPhillips pressed for a 27-month timeline, though PwC recommended 36 to 39 months as more realistic. Canada’s rollout proved the faster pace unsustainable, and the schedule was readjusted to 39 months. Once adjusted, each milestone was met. Operations continued uninterrupted: production stayed online, payroll ran, and payments to vendors, shareholders, and royalty owners went out on schedule.
By 2021, ConocoPhillips’ SAP environment contained eight to nine million lines of custom code, the accumulation of more than two decades of modifications. Maintaining and upgrading that code had become costly.
To reduce the burden, foundational processes were restored to SAP standard, competitively necessary work was pared back, and differentiating capabilities were shifted to SAP Business Technology Platform, where they could evolve without complicating the core. At go-live, the system ran 94% standard, reaching 97% with the SAP S/4 2023 Feature Pack 3 upgrade — a level of fit to standard that places the program among the cleanest cores in any industry.
When the program pushed into uncharted territory, most notably replacing remote logistics management, SAP product teams embedded with ConocoPhillips in Norway. On the docks, they observed operations firsthand and co-developed the new field logistics solution to ensure alignment with both roadmap commitments and operational realities.
Each deviation began with a roadmap review. If SAP already planned the capability, the choice was whether to wait, create a workaround, or implement a hybrid. If not, the request was submitted through the Customer Influence portal. Four governance layers reviewed each proposal: the solution team, program leadership, the decision board, and the executive steering committee. In several cases, finance leaders resolved the issue by directing the adoption of SAP’s process.
While governance structures were taking shape, the company also addressed its data landscape. Twenty-five regional legacy warehouses were collapsed into a single cloud instance on Azure, which gave analysts a unified source of truth and helped reduce the lag from reporting. At the same time, Asset Performance Management tools shifted maintenance practices away from reactive fixes and toward predictive planning.
Digital twins, already ingrained in company culture, were expanded with a clear purpose of keeping people off higher-risk assets, the most critical element of operations. The company reduced exposure while enabling faster remote decision-making by shifting more decisions into digital models. Even as AI hype surged mid-program, leadership resisted the distraction, choosing instead to deliver a clean platform first.
Deployment began in Canada, a smaller unit in the same time zone as Houston, which gave the team room to stabilize the system. From there, Asia Pacific joined, anchored by one operated asset in Australia and the rest in joint ventures. Norway and the UK came online on July 1, 2024, a date chosen to allow a full year of operation before a scheduled turnaround in 2025. The United States closed the rollout on January 1, 2025, with Lower 48 and Alaska moving onto S/4HANA. Sequencing by geography and business readiness helped kee the pace demanding but sustainable.
In mid-2025, three high-stakes events converged within six weeks: a planned North Sea turnaround that shut in half of production for 25 days, a technical upgrade of the SAP environment on June 28, and the big-bang integration of Marathon on July 1. The coordination required long hours and absolute clarity of accountability, yet the platform held.
On the following earnings call, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance highlighted the outcome: a $23.5 billion acquisition integrated in seven months, $1 billion in efficiencies delivered, and no operational disruption. He attributed its success directly to the technology platform being in place that enabled us to operate smoothly, assessing the program’s central purpose.
ConocoPhillips became the first massive PwC implementation since we reentered this business and one of the largest to date. At SAP Sapphire in 2024 and 2025, the ConocoPhillips story drew audiences second only to SAP CEO Christian Klein’s keynote. In client pursuits, the program continues to redefine expectations. While some integrators still present 85% fit to standard as “world-class,” PwC can point to ConocoPhillips’ 97%.
Reducing complexity in the core lowered operating and upgrade costs and made it easier to adopt new capabilities. Standardized processes can now run consistently across regions, while the system’s stability has proven valuable during acquisitions, major maintenance projects, and periods of market disruption.
Clean core has often been described as an ideal more than a reality, especially for asset-intensive companies with global operations. ConocoPhillips turned that ideal into practice, proving that clean core is attainable through discipline and clarity.
Robert Stephens is Principal with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); he is focused on delivering technology innovation for the energy industry.