This customer story explains how ADNOC Technology consolidated fragmented project and investment data into Planisware to establish centralized governance and a single, trusted source of portfolio information. The article also shows how this governance model and data foundation now support better strategic alignment and enable ADNOC’s AI and machine learning initiatives on top of reliable historical project data.
ADNOC Technology has used Planisware to move from scattered spreadsheets and manual entries to a centralized, governed portfolio platform that supports its technology strategy offering a single source of truth from ideation through to project closure.
ADNOC Technology at the heart of the energy transition
Founded in 1971, ADNOC is a diversified energy group whose mission is to responsibly deliver energy to the UAE and the world, while accelerating the shift toward a cleaner and smarter energy future by being one of the lowest carbon‑intensity oil and gas producers globally. Within this mission, technology, R&D, and innovation sit at the core of ADNOC’s strategy, with significant investment in digital solutions, AI, and new energy technologies to enhance efficiency, strengthen sustainability, and unlock long‑term value across its businesses.
As Vice President for Technology Strategy Planning & Portfolio Management, Asma Al Haddabi leads technology management, partnership planning, and portfolio management, overseeing a portfolio of projects, agreements, partnerships, and the associated processes and governance. Her career started as a construction and project engineer on ADNOC sites, giving her hands‑on field experience, before moving into corporate strategy and governance roles responsible for aligning projects with ADNOC’s strategic objectives.
From manual processes to a single source of truth
Before Planisware, ADNOC Technology managed its portfolio through manual processes spread across Excel files, emails, and documents stored on shared drives. This approach became increasingly difficult to sustain as the portfolio grew in volume and complexity, making it harder to maintain visibility and access information quickly enough to support governance and decision‑making.
The need for a more structured and integrated platform became clear: ADNOC Technology required a single, reliable source of truth capable of strengthening governance, standardizing processes, and providing real‑time visibility across its portfolio. Planisware was selected because it could centralize information, automate governance, scale with ADNOC’s ambitions, and support fast, reliable decision‑making at portfolio level, while offering a strategic partnership and expert team that could work closely with ADNOC’s business and IT stakeholders.
Structuring the technology portfolio in Planisware
ADNOC Technology structures its portfolio in Planisware to manage the full lifecycle of technology R&D, from early initiation through deployment and closure. The organization operates a stage‑gate model in the platform: projects move from initiation and business case development, through detailed planning of scope, milestones, and budget, into execution and progress monitoring, all under a clearly defined governance framework.
In parallel, ADNOC Technology manages a dedicated IP portfolio, overseeing patent submissions across the group and ensuring appropriate governance and tracking, as well as an automated reporting portfolio that provides weekly insights on key technology projects and priorities to management. This structure delivers end‑to‑end visibility and ensures that technology investments remain aligned to ADNOC’s broader strategic and sustainability goals.
Integrating enterprise systems and rolling out at scale
From the outset, integration was a key requirement for ADNOC Technology. The team already relied on several enterprise systems, including SAP for financials, an RVT tool for value monitoring, and an internal audit platform. With Planisware, these systems now connect seamlessly: project spending and budget updates are fed directly from SAP, and audit actions are reflected in the platform without manual intervention, strengthening both accuracy and governance.
Beyond integration, ADNOC Technology needed robust reporting, role‑based access to protect sensitive information, and process automation aligned with internal governance requirements. Planisware’s flexibility to integrate with any system as ADNOC’s maturity evolves allows the organization to expand into more advanced performance and strategic portfolio management capabilities over time, building on an increasingly rich set of historical data.
Implementation journey: collaboration, iteration, and change management
The implementation began with ADNOC Technology mapping its internal processes and then working with Planisware’s team, to translate them into the platform. The teams met weekly, collaborating on solution design, configuration, integration, and data governance topics to ensure Planisware mirrored ADNOC’s governance model and strategic priorities.
A phased launch approach was adopted, starting with the technology function and expanding as adoption grew. Data migration and user onboarding were deliberately paced, with quality prioritized over speed. Separate development, test, and production environments allowed ADNOC to validate changes and run user acceptance tests before exposing new features to end‑users.
Driving adoption with champions and continuous training
To ensure successful adoption, ADNOC Technology and Planisware placed strong emphasis on communication and training. Awareness sessions and live demos were held not only within ADNOC Technology but also with operating companies and other functions that had already heard about the platform and showed interest in using it.
Internal champions were trained intensively by Planisware focal points so they could cascade knowledge across their teams. These champions played a crucial role in guiding colleagues through their first data entries in Planisware, helping overcome initial resistance and building confidence in the new way of working. Today, more than 300 active users work within the platform, supporting a portfolio that continues to grow alongside ADNOC’s investments, with continuous training and improvements embedded into the adoption strategy.
Tangible impact: better visibility, faster decisions, AI‑ready data
Since adopting Planisware, ADNOC Technology has shifted from fragmented data to a single, reliable platform. Progress tracking, milestone updates, and governance have improved significantly, supporting higher decision quality and speed. Dashboards and automated reports now give top management clear visibility into key technology projects and priorities, while an intuitive interface and reduced number of clicks help users access critical information and monitor performance in real time.
This consolidated, governed dataset also lays the groundwork for ADNOC’s AI ambitions. ADNOC Technology is preparing to leverage AI in several areas: performance forecasting and auto‑calculations using conversational interfaces and chatbots to automate KPI calculations and scenario analysis; portfolio analytics and health monitoring where users can query the system and have it flag problem areas; and AI‑enabled risk assessment where historical data and similar projects are analyzed to provide more objective risk views at project level.
On the Planisware side, the platform already offers advanced capabilities such as predictive analytics and Monte‑Carlo simulations for forecasting, as well as data quality audits and multi‑objective portfolio optimization to help identify delays, performance gaps, and optimization opportunities across the portfolio. Together with the Planisware chatbot, these capabilities aim to make insights and portfolio intelligence easy to access for all stakeholders.
Evolving the user experience and partnership
User feedback has been central to the next phase of ADNOC Technology’s journey with Planisware. While the process coverage was strong, some users found the interface heavy, especially those who did not use the platform daily. In response, ADNOC and Planisware have prepared a rollout of a new, lighter interface offering clearer role‑based homepages, smoother navigation across ideation, initiation, and execution, and more intuitive ways to update milestones or review portfolio health.
For the Planisware team, the goal is not only to deliver a more modern interface but to simplify everyday work and help ADNOC fully leverage the single source of truth it has built. This ongoing collaboration around usability, AI, and strategic portfolio management reflects the broader relationship between ADNOC and Planisware: a partnership focused on turning data into governed, actionable insight that supports ADNOC Technology’s role in the UAE’s evolving energy landscape.
