The energy transition has risen to the top of the priority list for Oil, Gas & Energy companies. They wish to increase their use of renewable energy, diversify their revenue and asset portfolio as well as collaborate with other industries such as chemicals and utilities. Thus, Digital Transformation is the only way and they have established a set of strategic priorities to help them achieve their objectives. This article discusses the industry-specific features provided by RISE with SAP’s Business Transformation Service.

Let us begin by defining strategic priorities and the benefits they provide to the Oil, Gas & Energy Industries.

Strategic Priorities for Oil, Gas & Energy Companies

The importance and values of Digital Transformation have been recognised by leading Oil, Gas & Energy companies. Thus, they are concentrating on four strategic priorities outlined below in order to transform their organization into an intelligent enterprise.

• Extend beyond the barrel
• Digitalize production and delivery
• Compete as an ecosystem
• Unlock value with technology

In order to achieve this, Intelligent technologies embedded in RISE with SAP framework acts as a key-value contributor in enabling Oil, Gas & Energy companies to become intelligent enterprises.  Adapting to this enables your organization to redesign entire business models, processes, and products by driving enterprise digitalization through product development.

Digitalize Production and Delivery

Oil, Gas & Energy companies will use IoT, ML and Automation to manage physical deliveries across the network, disrupting the entire value chain. This will be accomplished without owning or operating any of the necessary inventory or assets, or without employing the necessary personnel. As more businesses recognise Industry 4.0 as a strategic priority, IoT integration across the entire organisation will unleash new potential, with assets transforming into a flexible hybrid system of automation and humans, adding to digital processes. Here, the “SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service” Solution provides real-time asset health information based on critical values and trends, allowing for efficient asset maintenance strategies that improve cost, risk, and performance management.

Let’s consider an example to gain a better understanding of this. Two people (A and B) have been assigned to conduct an inspection in their company. Let’s see how their work strategies are perceived to be beneficial from the company’s standpoint.

Person A uses a time-based inspection planning approach that makes him feel at ease. As a result, he began the inspection work, which triggered the maintenance work. He then updates all maintenance work records after completing all tasks. Also, he was solely responsible for revising the data because all of his work was done manually and others couldn’t revise anything.

Person B, on the other hand, took a completely different approach. He employs sensors to continuously monitor the performance of all equipment. When an item’s operating limits are exceeded, a sensor alerts the control centre. These notifications identify the equipment’s failure and the component that needs to be repaired. Then he updates all maintenance records from work orders and sensors from any device available in the control centre once the repair is completed.

To summarise, the issues Person A encountered while undergoing the inspection were condition-based limitations, unknown real-time errors, and performance issues with no cost, risk, or performance optimization, which necessitated the use of a manual process. Whereas Person B, was able to create a maintenance plan based on real-time asset health status and failure prediction to optimise lifecycle performance by using automated sensors to monitor equipment conditions.

Now you may be asking, “How can RISE with SAP helps us?”. Here are the primary business capabilities they offer to assist you in reaching your objectives:

• Access to all inventory, including assets in transit and remote locations.
• Spending on materials and complex services has been increased.
• Enabling automation and touchless transactions is possible.
• Trading and scheduling are integrated throughout your hydrocarbon value chain.
• Responding and adapting to your supply chain in real-time with the changing market conditions.

Top Value Drivers

The major value drivers in the Oil, Gas & Energy industry post successful deployment of SAP S/4HANA are:

• Increase in first-time fixed rate by 25%.
• Improvement in return on assets by 5%.
• Increase in revenue from cross-selling and up-selling by 2%–10%.
• Reduction by 5%–15% due to unplanned downtime.
• Reduction in maintenance cost by 3%–10%.

(Note: Data was taken from SAP’s statistics)

Conclusion 

To conclude, with hundreds of new features and seamless functionality, SAP S/4HANA can enhance your business values. Many upstream operators have benefited from flexible, agile, and scalable ERP capabilities on the cloud as a result of SAP S/4HANA adoption.

Own your tomorrow with a guided journey and outcome-driven practices of RISE with SAP. To know more about how SAP S/4HANA or about other solutions that can help enterprises in oil, gas and energy companies, do get in touch with us!