ExxonMobil Digital Operations Platform

Context

ExxonMobil's upstream operations teams were running some of the most complex industrial processes on the planet using some of the most basic digital tools available. Shift handovers -- the critical moment where one operations crew transfers responsibility to the next -- relied on paper, spreadsheets, and massive OneNote notebooks. Maintenance planning happened in Excel files so complex they had become their own form of technical debt. The gap between the sophistication of the physical operations and the primitiveness of the digital tools supporting them was striking.

While at Avanade, we partnered with ExxonMobil Upstream IT and Accenture to close that gap -- not with a massive custom development effort, but with a disciplined, governed approach to Microsoft's Power Platform that proved enterprise low-code could work at scale in one of the most demanding operational environments in the world.

Challenge

The core challenge was not technical -- it was organizational. ExxonMobil had seen what happens when low-code platforms are adopted without governance: citizen developers build solutions that work for their team but create maintenance nightmares, security gaps, and data silos. The company needed the agility of Power Platform with the rigor of centralized IT governance.

Two specific operational pain points drove the engagement. First, shift handovers were inconsistent and error-prone. Every site had its own format, its own data sources, and its own tribal knowledge about what information mattered. Second, annual maintenance planning -- the risk-based process of deciding which assets get maintained when -- was trapped in sprawling Excel workbooks that were nearly impossible to standardize across global manufacturing sites.

Approach

We took a deliberately professional approach to what is often positioned as a citizen development platform. Rather than letting individual teams build their own solutions, we assembled a focused 17-person development team that operated with the discipline of a traditional software engineering organization but leveraged Power Platform's speed advantages.

Digital Shift Handover consolidated handover data from multiple legacy systems into a single, consistent application. We worked directly with operations crews during the design phase -- the people who would actually use the tool at 3 AM during a shift change. The result was an interface that surfaced the right information at the right moment without requiring operators to navigate complex system integrations themselves. Power Apps handled the front end, Power Automate managed the data flows, and Azure Data Explorer provided the analytical backbone.

Enterprise Annual Maintenance Plan replaced the Excel-based planning process with a centralized workspace built on model-driven Power Apps and Dataverse. The application standardized risk-based work selection across all manufacturing sites while still allowing site-specific customization where the operational reality demanded it. Power BI provided the reporting layer that gave leadership visibility into maintenance planning across the entire global portfolio.

The governance model was as important as the applications themselves. We established reusable component libraries, centralized deployment through Azure DevOps, and implemented Power Platform Managed Environments to maintain control without sacrificing development velocity.

Results

The Digital Shift Handover platform supported over ten thousand handovers among hundreds of operators, delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars in value through reduced downtime, productivity gains, and safety incident prevention. When the information flowing between shifts is consistent and complete, problems get caught earlier and responses happen faster -- the kind of operational improvement that compounds over time.

The Annual Maintenance Plan deployed across ExxonMobil manufacturing sites globally, replacing a patchwork of Excel files with a single source of truth for maintenance planning. The standardization did not just improve efficiency -- it made risk-based decision-making consistent and auditable across the entire organization.

This engagement proved that Power Platform is not just for departmental apps and quick prototypes. With the right governance, architecture, and development discipline, it can serve as the foundation for mission-critical operations in one of the world's most demanding industrial environments.