Manjula Nadarajah is currently a Senior Strategic Marketing Analyst for Shell’s Engineering and Technology solutions provider, spanning various oil and gas business sectors across the Shell Group and external to Shell customers.

Manjula qualified as a Mechanical Engineer in Australia, has an MBA and over 15 years experience in the oil and gas industry.  Her experience and expertise resides in business and technology strategy development and implementation, acquisitions and business development, CTI and strategic marketing.

Manjula joined Shell in 1998 and based in Australia, worked with several divisions within the Shell Services Company in product development, market entry strategy development and implementation, business plan development and acquisitions and was part of a team that developed an internal CI function. 

In 2001 Manjula transferred to the USA to take the lead in developing and embedding a CTI capability within Shell’s Deepwater division.  The assignment focused on developing and implementing CTI processes and frameworks and creating actionable intelligence to support both the leadership team and the business in strategy development and opportunity and threat identification and action.

In 2004 Manjula transferred to The Netherlands and focused on developing and implementing Shell’s Exploration and Production division’s Competitive Technology Strategy with key recommendations for R&D focus areas, strategic outlook for R&D and integration of business and technology strategies.  Activities included developing and implementing an R&D portfolio management process including technology mapping, R&D portfolio ranking process, R&D business planning process and implementing the R&D projects staging gating process.  Similar work was also undertaken for R&D across the Shell Group.

Manjula currently resides in The Hague and as a Senior Strategic Marketing Analyst, focuses her efforts on developing the go-to-market strategy for the upstream market.

Technology Mapping for Strategic Decision Making 

The oil industry faces great and challenging change. The era of easy oil is disappearing and the industry must now focus on extracting oil and gas from more difficult, complex and harsher environments that require innovation in technology. In addition, industry dynamics are in flux, with greater competition from suppliers, niche players and customers. The ability to position and differentiate on a technological basis is becoming critical. Understanding the competitive environment is not enough; leveraging that understanding to develop strategic options for technology development is key. Shell International Exploration and Production has an active technology strategy and planning group that supports strategic decision making and can provide valuable lessons for other CI and Competitive Technical Intelligence (CTI) managers.

Presentation Goals

• Understand how a company maps the technological and competitive landscape
• Help CTI managers explain the technology landscape to management
• Learn how to leverage technology mapping to develop strategic options by linking CTI to strategic decision-making