The onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to increased digitalization for many oil and gas companies. The industry generates a huge volume of information- documents and data – internally and externally as such requires an application that helps speed up their process while saving a lot of human time and effort.
Robotics Process Automation (RPA) has a significant effect on the oil & gas industry because of the surge in digital and technological transformations globally. RPA or Robotic Process Automation uses computer software or robots to perform repetitive tasks and thus help in saving a lot of human effort and time.
Now, let’s look at the various streams in the oil and gas industry and how RPA can help add value to the business.
Upstream: high time sensitivity as a rig downtime may result in hundreds of thousands of dollars loss per day. Real-time analysis of production, critical spares, other inventory, safety issues, etc. is critical for a successful operation. RPA can assist engineers and the workforce working upstream to expedite their deliveries, accurately and timely. E.g. A warehouse manager at a critical spare’s facility in a remote location may have a team of Parts specialists, who track parts and constantly update ERP all through the day. Parts information is generally sent by suppliers through emails, which could be read by RPA and uploaded into ERP. These parts specialists can now focus their time on expediting orders and drive higher fulfillment rate.
Midstream: The logistics processes are generally manual intensive. E.g. a trucking company may submit paper timesheets or mileage for billing purposes. A large workforce focuses on scanning and entering this data into ERP manually. RPA can assist using OCR and ERP upload functionalities. Another example could be updating inventory based on the information received from another system or a supplier/customer.
Downstream: The number of hand-offs and stakeholders involved in this section is much higher. There is a B2C as well as B2B. In both cases, collating data and entering ERP is quite time-consuming. RPA can assist by reading data from different sources and uploading it into ERP.
L2 Processes | L3 Processes | Opportunity |
Inventory management process | Regularly updating inventory into ERP from different sources | Can assist in the timely update of inventory and uploading into ERP. |
Safety incident reporting | Safety managers collate information and report daily on safety incidents | RPA can assist in collating this information and creating reports |
Logistics management | Cargo tracking process | Information received from brokers can be collated by RPA and updated in the cargo tracking systems. |
Pricing analysis | Price analysis of crude and other petroleum products | Analysts refer to multiple sources to collect data which RPA can seamlessly do |
Parts tracking | Critical parts & spares are tracked constantly, and delivery schedules updated | RPA can collate parts data from multiple sources |
L2 Processes | L3 Processes | Opportunity |
Inventory management | Tracking of crude and consumption from various systems and reports | RPA can assist analysts in collating this information and create reports |
Market research | Analysts perform market research by visiting multiple sites and sources | RPA can assist by webpage scrapping and collating relevant information |
Logistics management | Manage billing by tracking miles by a fleet (of trucks) | Mile’s tracking could be manual, paper based. OCR and RPA can assist in collating this information |
Reporting | Highly regulated segment, requires transparent reporting | RPA can assist in collating information required for such reporting |
L2 Processes | L3 Processes | Opportunity |
Inventory management | Tracking of crude and consumption from various systems and reports | RPA can assist analysts in collating this information and create reports |
Market research | Analysts perform market research by visiting multiple sites and sources | RPA can assist by webpage scrapping and collating relevant information |
Logistics management | Manage billing by tracking miles by a fleet (of trucks) | Mile’s tracking could be manual, paper based. OCR and RPA can assist in collating this information |
Reporting | Highly regulated segment, requires transparent reporting | RPA can assist in collating information required for such reporting |
For more information on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and how it can benefit your organization, contact us.
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