Every large capital project, whether an LNG terminal, a refinery expansion, a petrochemical complex or a mining development, runs on two parallel data streams that rarely speak to one another. The first is the supplier relationship data: registration forms, qualification documents, contract awards, spend records and performance scores. The second is the local content and compliance data: national ownership percentages, workforce nationalisation figures, training hours, in-country spend ratios and the statutory reports that regulators demand on a quarterly or annual basis. On most projects these two streams are captured, stored and maintained by different teams, in different systems, often using different definitions of the same supplier. The result is a reconciliation exercise that consumes weeks of skilled labour every reporting cycle and introduces risk into figures that regulators, lenders and joint venture partners all rely on.
This article examines why that fragmentation persists, what it costs organisations running mega-projects, how local content regimes in Nigeria, Guyana and Saudi Arabia are tightening the link between supplier records and compliance reporting, and why building one continuous pipeline from supplier onboarding to compliance reporting has become a competitive and regulatory necessity rather than a nice-to-have.
Data silos are not a niche IT concern; they are one of the most consistently cited barriers to operational performance across large organisations. DATAVERSITY’s 2024 Trends in Data Management survey found that 68% of organisations cite data silos as their top concern, up seven percentage points on the previous year, and IBM’s research into data quality reports that 82% of enterprises say data silos disrupt their critical workflows, with a similar share of enterprise data going unanalysed as a result (DATAVERSITY ; IBM).
On capital projects, this fragmentation is compounded by the sheer number of parties involved: an owner, an EPC contractor, dozens of tier-one and tier-two suppliers, joint venture partners and a regulator, each maintaining its own version of “who the supplier is” and “what they have delivered.” Procurement teams typically hold supplier master data in an ERP or a dedicated supplier relationship management tool, while local content and compliance teams track national content percentages, certifications and workforce data in spreadsheets or bespoke registers. Oil and gas operators are particularly exposed here: research into environmental and regulatory reporting in the sector found that around 80% of oil and gas companies still rely on legacy systems and spreadsheets to manage compliance-relevant data, which slows retrieval during audits and creates fragmented records across departments (Matidor).
The financial impact of this fragmentation is measurable, even if it rarely appears as a single line item. IBM’s analysis of poor data quality found that more than a quarter of organisations estimate losses exceeding USD 5 million annually because of it, with 7% reporting losses of USD 25 million or more (IBM). A separate review of enterprise fragmentation costs noted that when data lives across dozens of disconnected systems, demonstrating compliance to regulators becomes a manual, error-prone exercise, with teams spending weeks preparing for audits by gathering evidence from disconnected sources rather than pulling it from one governed record (DataMotion).
Supplier onboarding, the very first step in the pipeline, is itself an expensive manual process when it is not connected to downstream systems. Analysis of onboarding automation found that a fully manual supplier onboarding process can cost an organisation up to USD 35,000 per supplier, compared with roughly USD 2,400 once the process is automated and integrated, a reduction of more than 90% (Moxo). Timing tells a similar story: Graphite Connect’s 2026 Supplier Data Benchmark Report, covered by Procurement360, found that average supplier onboarding cycles run to 18.8 days, with the gap between the fastest and slowest organisations reflecting the maturity of their underlying data processes and governance rather than their scale (Procurement360). Every day a supplier record sits unresolved between procurement and compliance systems is a day of exposure on local content commitments that were promised to a regulator or a lender.
Gartner’s 2025 Leadership Vision for Chief Procurement Officers adds a forward-looking dimension to this problem: 74% of procurement leaders say their data is not yet ready to support AI-driven analytics, which means the reporting and forecasting capability that boards increasingly expect is being held back not by a lack of tools but by a lack of trusted, connected data underneath them (Gartner).
Regulators running local content and in-country value programmes have moved well beyond asking for a headline percentage figure at project close. They now expect supplier-level data that can be traced, verified and reconciled against procurement records throughout the life of the project.
Nigeria’s Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), established under the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act, monitors Nigerian content compliance through mandatory statutory reporting on procurement, marine vessel utilisation and local content commitments, verified in part through the NOGIC Joint Qualification System database that operators and contractors must maintain accurate supplier records against (NCDMB). Non-compliance is not a paperwork matter: enforcement can include fines of up to 5% of project value and, in serious cases, contract cancellation, which makes accurate, current supplier and content data a direct commercial risk rather than an administrative inconvenience (Azaka Associates).
Guyana offers a newer but equally instructive example. Under the Local Content Act, companies must register through the Local Content Registry to be eligible for petroleum sector contracts, and by November 2024 over 1,300 Guyanese firms had been certified and listed, with the Local Content Secretariat reporting approximately USD 743 million in local spending on services, employment and capacity development in 2024 alone (Oilnow). The registry itself is now a live, queryable system that operators must reconcile their own supplier and spend data against (Guyana Local Content Register).
Saudi Aramco’s In-Kingdom Total Value Add (iktva) programme takes this further still by embedding reporting directly into the supplier relationship. Suppliers are required to self-report quantitative and qualitative data, including localised goods and services, Saudi salaries, training investment and local research and development spend, with that data independently verified and submitted annually before and throughout a supplier’s participation in the programme. Aramco recently confirmed it has reached its target of 70% local content through iktva, with an ambition to hit 75% by 2030 (Aramco ; Al Tamimi & Company). In each of these regimes, the common thread is the same: local content compliance is no longer a report bolted onto the end of the procurement process, it is a data discipline that has to be built into supplier onboarding from day one.
The organisations succeeding in this environment are those treating supplier data as a governed master data asset rather than a by-product of transactional systems. Master data management initiatives that establish a single source of truth for supplier and content data consistently show measurable returns: McKinsey’s analysis of predictive maintenance and industrial data programmes found that initiatives built on a proper data governance foundation deliver 1.8 times more return than those that skip it, a pattern that applies equally to supplier and compliance data on capital projects (Verdantis). The market is responding accordingly: Grand View Research values the master data management market at USD 19.9 billion in 2023, projecting growth to USD 60.7 billion by 2030 at a 17.4% compound annual growth rate, as organisations recognise that fragmented master data is now a board-level risk rather than a back-office irritant (Verdantis).
The practical answer to all of this is to stop treating supplier onboarding, qualification, contract management and local content reporting as separate systems that periodically get reconciled, and instead to build them as one continuous pipeline with a single supplier record at its centre. When a supplier is onboarded, their ownership structure, nationality of workforce, certifications and equity details should be captured once, validated once, and then flow automatically into every downstream process, from award and spend tracking through to the statutory local content report submitted to a regulator such as NCDMB or the Guyana Local Content Secretariat. This is the essence of a single source of truth for procurement: not a dashboard that sits on top of disconnected systems, but a shared data model that procurement, local content and compliance teams all draw from and update in real time.
This is precisely the gap that Dharas is built to close. As a combined supplier relationship management and local content reporting platform, Dharas is designed around the principle of integrated local content and procurement data: supplier onboarding, qualification and performance data live in the same system as national content calculations and regulatory reports, so procurement heads, local content managers and compliance teams are working from one continuous, auditable pipeline rather than reconciling exports between disconnected tools at the end of every reporting cycle.
For procurement and local content teams running newly commissioned mega-projects, the choice is no longer between good procurement data and good compliance data; regulators in Nigeria, Guyana and Saudi Arabia have made clear that the two must be the same data, verifiable from the moment a supplier is onboarded to the moment a statutory report is filed. Master data management for capital projects is no longer a technical initiative confined to IT; it is the operational backbone that determines whether a local content report can withstand an audit, whether a supplier dispute can be resolved with evidence rather than argument, and whether a project retains its licence to operate in the jurisdictions it depends on.
On a newly commissioned refinery, LNG terminal, or mining site, two teams are quietly working...
READ ARTICLE →
Procurement leaders spend years perfecting sourcing strategy, negotiation playbooks and category management frameworks, yet many...
READ ARTICLE →
Every large capital project, whether an LNG terminal, a refinery expansion, or a new mining...
READ ARTICLE →