Table of Contents
Increased consumerism, technological advancements, heightened connectivity are driving each and every industry verticals to take a leap forward. Oil and gas industry is not an exception, deploying enterprise mobile applications as well as consumer-grade mobile apps, as well as web applications. From mobile connectivity to enterprise mobility, digital transformation is driving the oil and gas industry on the path of ubiquity. Enterprises, be it big, small, or mid-size are trying to overcome the bottlenecks to gain maximum benefits of enterprise mobility services.
Here is how Mobility is Changing Oil and Gas Industry:
Upstream Sector:
The upstream finds and produces crude oil and natural gas encompasses searching for potential underground or underwater crude oil and natural gas fields, exploratory wells drilling, and drilling and operating the wells that recover raw materials from underground.
Mobile applications can
- Streamline various facets of the industry relating to operation, environmental, compliance and maintenance tasks.
- Work-order automation through mobile automation.
Midstream Sector:
This sector primarily involves the transportation, storage, and wholesale marketing of crude or refined petroleum products.
In this sector mobility can help achieve
- Automation of maintenance-related tasks, work orders and inspections for terminal operations, pipeline & storage.
- Enable timely and accurate field data on midstream operations.
- Seamless integration with corporate backend systems ensuring compliance with operational / safety procedures.
Downstream Sector:
The downstream sector mainly involve activities related to the refining of petroleum crude oil and processing as well as purification of raw natural gas, as well as the marketing and distribution of related products.
Mobility can help facilitate
- Automation of maintenance tasks, work orders and inspections workflows
- Ensure accuracy of critical info
- Easy to use interface to field users compared to access to complex backend systems
- Integration to PM / ERP systems
- Control over MRO and enhance mobile force automation
- Distribution & sales management of packaged products such as additives.
Corporate:
The benefits of enterprise mobility solutions are not just restricted to the field or refinery. Considering the rapid change in the industry, mobile applications can help key stakeholders make decisions to increase revenue and reduce costs. It can help improve employee efficiency and keep a tactical watch on operations.
- Smartphone and tablet apps that allow executives
- Enable complete automation and management of service call
- Assist corporate and oil field suppliers, with integration to multiple systems
- Complete visibility into productivity, dashboards, cost metrics
Mobile Solutions for Oil and Gas Companies
Mobile Supply Chain Collaboration
Mobile Apps can allow seamless communication and collaboration between specialist workers in real time across the global supply chain. This collaborative approach eliminates the need of being physically present at the plant, as well as increases plant availability and reduces time to market
Workforce Management and Field-force Enablement
With hundreds and thousands of workers spread across different facilities worldwide, resource management can be a cumbersome and daunting task. Several documents such as travel documentation, certification, schedules, skills, availability and more needs to be maintained. In such situation enterprise mobility solutions can help track, manage, document and validate such vital information about workforce, as well as predict demand patterns and identify solutions.
Mobile Analytics and Dashboards
Analytics hold key to success. It is all about obtaining actionable insights from voluminous data to help in real-time decision making. Executive, key metrics and operations dashboards provide real-time insights. In upstream, users can manage drilling operations via smartphone from virtually any location. With mobile applications, users can access details of drilling operations along with key metrics such as job cost, daily drilling milestone reports, production reports, and operations summaries.
Sales-force Enablement
Although there has been a massive increase in investment in sales-force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, user adoption remains limited. Extending SFA and CRM functionality to accessible, easy-to-use wireless devices puts these high-value systems into the hands of mobile workers, where and when they need them most. This accessibility rapidly improves user adoption rates.
Advantage of using Enterprise Mobility Solutions for the Oil & Gas
Streamline Repetitive Processes – Enhance work processes and streamlines mundane tasks or time-consuming activities such as rounds, inspections, repairs, and calibrations. This reduction in process cycle time brings major payoffs in labor costs, customer satisfaction, and product quality.
Facilitate the Flow of Information
Information flow and exchange is the key to operational success. Extensive use of company information by employees brings information to workers when they need it the most and enhance work flow processes. This flow of information improves efficiency of workers with data-driven systems and decision making regarding regulatory compliance.
Enable Improved Customer Service
The rising adoption of smartphones is leading to an increase in customer loyalty and differentiating brand value in a competitive marketplace. Mobile solutions transform the ways in which business processes and activities are conducted.
This is due to the rules and regulations applying to the energy sector, as well as the remote and harsh nature of the locations where oil and gas operations are mainly carried out. In an environment of volatile energy prices, increasing maintenance costs, and regulatory mandates, our experience shows that mobile technology can prove useful in virtually every part of an organization’s value chain.
Conclusion
Many small and industry-leading players are currently catering to specific industries. It is important to select providers with demonstrated experience in deploying mobile solutions for oil and gas companies, where the requirements and success factors are often closely unique to the industry.
The adoption of enterprise-level mobile solutions by oil and gas companies is in its early stages, and challenges lie ahead in quantifying its impact on the industry. Innovation in mobile technologies will help to accelerate results and establish excellence in the industry.