Sim­i­lar to just about every oth­er busi­ness, the oil and gas indus­try has expe­ri­enced a series of ups and downs in 2020. Oil prices plum­met­ed—hit­ting a 30-year low — as demand shrank both quick­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The oil and gas indus­try will emerge from the COVID-19 out­break to an altered world look­ing for new, less-volatile ener­gy sources.

The oil and gas track at ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Indus­tries fea­tured thought lead­ers in the indus­try address­ing the shift­ing land­scape. Atten­dees heard about how ener­gy com­pa­nies like Shell, Cono­coPhillips, and Chevron are lever­ag­ing new tech­nol­o­gy to not only grow their busi­ness but also face the industry’s hur­dles head-on.

Diver­si­fy­ing Ener­gy Portfolios

Through­out the online event, a top theme at many ses­sions was the need for oil and gas com­pa­nies to begin find­ing new rev­enue streams.

“Major oil and gas com­pa­nies are mak­ing major invest­ments in alter­na­tive sources,” said Ben­jamin Beber­ness, vice pres­i­dent and glob­al head of the Oil and Gas Indus­try Busi­ness Unit at SAP. ​“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is at the core part of their business.”

In a lat­er ses­sion, Beber­ness dis­cussed how oil and gas com­pa­nies can excel in the ​“new nor­mal” cre­at­ed in the wake of COVID-19. He talked about how com­pa­nies in this sec­tor are seri­ous­ly broad­en­ing their rev­enue port­fo­lios by financ­ing renew­able sources of ener­gy — includ­ing solar and wind power.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how SAP cus­tomers in the oil and gas sec­tor lever­age the company’s tech­nol­o­gy not only to mod­u­late alter­na­tive ener­gy invest­ments and man­age cur­rent assets and rev­enue streams but also to mon­i­tor their car­bon foot­prints mov­ing for­ward. At SAP SAP­PHIRENOW Reimag­ined, the soft­ware com­pa­ny unveiled a car­bon emis­sions account­ing sys­tem as part of its Cli­mate 21 initiative. 

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Man­ag­ing Oil and Gas Enter­prise Data

One of the key themes through­out the entire event was how to main­tain and get the most from enter­prise data. Data main­te­nance is a vital top­ic in near­ly every indus­try. But, in the oil and gas sec­tor, it’s of the utmost impor­tance that com­pa­nies have fast and reli­able access to their data.

Moni­ka Mangla, pro­gram man­ag­er of cen­tral finance at Chevron, walked atten­dees through the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the company’s finance sys­tems and capa­bil­i­ties. One of the dig­i­tal strate­gies behind this under­tak­ing includ­ing bring­ing data trans­paren­cy across the orga­ni­za­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, Mangla dis­cussed the impor­tance of ensur­ing there was buy-in for a com­mon data model.

Anoth­er ses­sion focused on how Cono­coPhillips improved test­ing with a data sync man­ag­er from EPI-USE Labs. Jamie Dono­hue, IT func­tion­al con­sul­tant at Cono­coPhillips talked about some of the instances where EPI-USE Labs’ tool has helped the com­pa­ny with its test­ing. One of these use cas­es was the Cono­coPhillips’ PRA (prod­uct and rev­enue account­ing) road map, which used the data sync man­ag­er. The new func­tion allows the oil and gas com­pa­ny to copy prod­uct, sales, rev­enue, and own­er­ship account­ing data. Dur­ing the test­ing process, the com­pa­ny was able to copy impor­tant data so that users would not be shut out of the sys­tem. This helped alle­vi­ate some of the lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with imple­ment­ing new solu­tions and con­duct­ing effi­cient testing.

Evert Rui­js, lead design author­i­ty at Shell, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion focused on how Shell pre­pared its data as it geared up to imple­ment SAP S/4HANA. This is a mas­sive move that will take place over the next decade and will see Shell mov­ing from 30 dif­fer­ent ERPs to SAP S/4HANA. ​“The data mod­el is at the core of what we are try­ing to achieve,” he said.

Rui­js said that SAP S/4HANA will help Shell ​“dri­ve a more inte­grat­ed and stream­lined data mod­el.” He indi­cat­ed that this process was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the icon­ic com­pa­ny to recon­fig­ure its data. So far, the com­pa­ny has been reeval­u­at­ing its data mod­el piece by piece. It also is using data stan­dards from across the entire indus­try to inform its model. 

An On-Time, On-Bud­get Vir­tu­al SAP S/4HANA Rollout

For many com­pa­nies, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic came at one of the worst pos­si­ble moments: right in the mid­dle of imple­ment­ing a new SAP solution.

In Octo­ber 2019, C&J Ener­gy Ser­vices and Keane Group merged to form Nex­Ti­er Oil­field Solu­tions. The new com­pa­ny part­nered with Accen­ture to imple­ment SAP S/4HANA. The 14-week roll­out began at the begin­ning of 2020, right as the COVID-19 out­break was start­ing. Despite this, the com­pa­ny was able to achieve a suc­cess­ful vir­tu­al roll­out that came in both on time and budget.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Cata­ri­na Ceitil, shER­Pa project direc­tor at Galp, broke down the company’s jour­ney to SAP S/4HANA. This process began in May 2018, with what Ceitil described as ​“a blank page,” before the com­pa­ny land­ed on SAP S/4HANA. Galp part­nered with SAP, Deloitte, and IBM to accom­plish the project — called shER­PA — using a green­field imple­men­ta­tion. The imple­men­ta­tion process­es began in April 2019. But, COVID-19 struck right in the mid­dle of the test­ing phase. This caused Galp to push its ini­tial go-live back a month, to May 2020. Like Nex­Ti­er, Galp moved its project online, which pre­sent­ed some issues. Mak­ing use of dai­ly check­points and sta­tus meet­ings, along with webi­na­rs to share project updates to the 120-per­son team, Galp suc­cess­ful­ly accom­plished its implementation.

Lean­ing on Automa­tion for Low-Cost Growth

Through­out the event, atten­dees also heard about the impor­tance of automa­tion, and how oil and gas com­pa­nies are using tech­nolo­gies like machine learn­ing and robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA). Beber­ness not­ed that these solu­tions help com­pa­nies min­i­mize costs while increas­ing employ­ee productivity.

“[Automa­tion] is the new fron­tier every­one is seek­ing,” he said. ​“These man­u­al process­es are get­ting in the way of being agile.” He encour­aged oil and gas com­pa­nies to inves­ti­gate automa­tion as a way to increase growth at a low cost.

One of the final ses­sions of the event fea­tured a con­ver­sa­tion focused on RPA. Jen­nifer Stevens, IT pro­gram man­ag­er at Marathon Oil Com­pa­ny, led a con­ver­sa­tion with Rashad Flintroy, RPA solu­tion archi­tect and bot con­troller at Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um; Daniel Woelfel-Mon­si­vais, RPA lead mod­el­er at Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um; and Jason Townsend, direc­tor of Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Ser­vices COE at ConocoPhillips.

All four pre­sen­ters said their com­pa­nies began using RPA in their finance or account­ing depart­ments. ​“That’s the area where a lot of automa­tion can occur with redun­dant work,” said Woelfel-Monsivais.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic influ­enced these company’s use of automa­tion. Flintroy said it has encour­aged Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um to speed up its use of automa­tion. “[The virus] has actu­al­ly ramped our RPA group up,” he said. We have peo­ple who had too much on their plate so they were look­ing for some­thing like RPA to help peo­ple take things off their plate.”

Watch all of the oil and gas ses­sions on demand, along with the rest of ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Industries.