All companies in the oil and gas industry face the unpredictability of the ups and downs of the commodity markets. The technology team at Canada’s largest drilling rig contractor, Precision Drilling, decided to use a downturn as an opportunity to rebuild its ERP system for the future with a sweeping greenfield SAP S/4HANA implementation.

Since first adopting SAP in 1996, Precision Drilling has grown from a Canadian company into a global corporation that now runs operations in North America and the Middle East. Company leaders recognized that they needed to reduce the complexity in their systems while also standardizing processes across regions.

As the market slowed down, many companies would have cut back teams and put projects on hold. But Darren Ruhr, chief administrative officer of Precision Drilling, and his team made the bold move to gather the best talent and use that slow time to tackle an extremely ambitious project to reinvent its tech landscape.

Going Greenfield in Downtime