As the government gradually eases the lock down and most businesses grappling with the appropriate response to COVID19 and economic recovery for their business, workforce and customers, with the unique situation of an overstocked oil market and massive fall in demand, reduced number of skilled workers with multiple rounds of industry layoffs, delays in business and workflow process in addition to the ‘disruptive’ digital technologies currently seeing several sectors rapidly transformed by fast changing innovations such as Block chain, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, Immerse reality, spread of mobile technologies, advanced remote-sensing services and distributed computing.
For many organisations the current crisis is an opportunity to not just survive but thrive and has created a once-in-a-generation test of resilience planning and organisation flexibility.
The Nigeria’s oil industry is one of the largest in Africa and is the single largest contributor to the country’s exports. In 2018, the nation’s crude oil accounted for 68% of all exports. However, the country’s share to country’s GDP has drastically dipped in recent times due to outbreak of COVID19 Pandemic, low prices forecast for strategic commodities, lack of quality infrastructures, economic uncertainties, labour issues and other political instabilities.
Despite increasing labour issues and a drop in investment, Nigeria Oil & Gas industry as a critical sector of the economy, still possess enormous potential due to its vast mineral endowment and its focus on improving growth.
However, lack of effective technology solution, stringent regulations and exorbitant operational costs needed to make returns has continued to dent investments in the Nigerian oil and gas sector.
The sector is no longer business as usual’ because of the fast-changing world of work anchored by digital transformation and the reality is that companies that do not align are left behind.
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Nonetheless, the digital revolution now empowers consumer with ever increasing expectations and this is currently shaping various organisations business model both in operational and commercial areas. But, the Nigeria oil and gas sector to a large extent has remained stuck in legacy processes and their decades old technology and currently suffers from low profit margins. With a few exceptions, indigenous oil companies overall who still struggle on how to adapt to the real-time and agile environment.
Business automation and work flow technologies are creating new opportunities to integrate businesses across the oil and gas value chain in a digitally driven eco-system.
The O & G sector in Nigeria is in dire need to align to the current wave of digital transformation which has the potential to drive better efficiency, yield and profitability compared to previously attained levels. Market forecasts post COVID19 era suggest that ‘A Digital Oil and Gas Revolution’ will be the newest shift which could help empower sector players meet the needs of the demands and supply of the future.
IPI Solutions Nigeria Limited, a leading digital transformation and value innovation company in Nigeria can digitize your organization’s assets, actions and processes by creating a flow. Crater 365 uses the created flows across the organization to create ONE VIEW of the ecosystem (customers, partners, agents, staff, stakeholders, management and the board etc.). Further to that, the ecosystem is orchestrated using Crater 365 to harness value flow within the ecosystem while orchestrating new value flows in a perfect circle of value creation, production, distribution, consumption, archival and reproduction.
IPI has a vision of becoming the most Valuable Digital Transformation Business Solutions Provider in Africa, through its team of young and brilliant technology experts build local content business automation software Crater365that enables productivity from anywhere, helps you work remotely, work fast, work simple, work convenient.
Presently, the Nigerian oil and gas industry challenge is not majorly the inaccessibility of data, but rather how to make the large volume of gathered data more effective. In response to this challenge, the IPI Solutions Nigeria Ltd has evolved from supplying hardware equipment and providing Microsoft solutions to Oil & Gas companies with aftermarket services to becoming more service-based and offering software tools that can translate huge volumes of data into meaningful, intelligent information that can be leveraged to make important business decisions.
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Inventiveness to digitize oil fields are being realized, and this has led to investing in instrumentation in order to increase productivity and complete projects within defined budgets and timelines. These edges when fully established and deployed, will be extremely beneficial, especially in offshore rigs, to gathering production data in a timely manner.
Crater365 is a suite of solutions that brings Collaboration into Process Automation and Electronic Documents Management System (EDMS). It’s a Workflow automation platform that orchestrates multiple integrated business processes to augment staff activities within the Oil and Gas sector by assisting them to deliver faster outcomes, amply their productivity to get things done more efficient with less input, at same time, automate repeatable business processes. This will unlock the potential to actual productivity of the bank while enabling successful delivery of the Bank’s missions and goals, in addition provides visibility into each step. Its goal is to manage end-end workflows, support people and organizations as their work habits evolve from a communication focus to a collaboration focus.
It allows users the integration of data and systems, tasks distribution and real time monitoring- now with mobile application capability for everyday work across to the platform, allowing you work in ways that work best for you.
In simpler terms, for businesses; Crater 365 unifies project delivery from kickoff, logistics to cash collection, automate project creation, send time and expense data and eliminate the need for double entry. In addition, also enables you gain minute by minute control over your business processes from anywhere, monitor how you’re racing against time, budget, and margins, aids you see into the sales pipeline to accurately forecast resource needs anytime.
The fast growing rate of demand and usage for Crater365 by business owners is already transforming and reshaping every part of the sector’s value chain, making new business models viable and intensifying the battle for customer mindshare. Management of resources and distribution of commodities throughout the eco-system is becoming highly optimized, individualized, intelligent and anticipatory. Crater 365 functions in real time in a hyper-connected way, driven by data, making supply chains even better traceable and coordinated at the most detailed level.
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Crater365 is a configurable solution for product specification management in process industries and it is worthy of note to state that a custom form of Crater365 automation technology have been developed to improve system performance and service quality in terms of business sustainability growth amidst challenging business environment, increased production with no further staffing requirements, safety, speed, Improved quality, repeatability and consistency for the Nigerian Oil and Gas sector. This is done by automating labor-intensive tasks which have historically been done manually. Crater365 with its open, flexible and scalable architecture is The ideal platforms for addressing concerns of the African oil and gas sector for achieving optimal production costs and enhancing competitiveness in the global/ export markets. It also aims at improvements in managing supply chains, resource utilization and production processes efficiently; minimizing delays and production related losses.
Its enterprise solutions —integrate traditional financial management applications (e.g., accounting, budget control, accounts payable, payroll) with non-financial applications (e.g., human resources, purchasing, inventory) through a common database standard and premium power platform connectors. Its systems promise information integration and opportunities to reengineer processes based on the sectors best business practices. And also serves as the gateway and infrastructure for electronic commerce and Web-based service delivery to clients. Activity based costing capabilities (accounting), vendor registration through the Internet (purchasing), payment status inquiry through the Internet (accounts payable), employee self service (benefits administration), limiting spending power to revenues collected (budget control), and permit/license acquisition via the Internet (revenue management).
Oil and Gas companies in Nigeria that is digitally driven and intelligently automated with Crater365 will experience systems that are highly anticipatory and adaptable with the potential to deliver economic benefits through increased productivity, cost efficiency and market opportunities, social and cultural benefits through increased communication and inclusivity and environmental benefits through optimized resource use.
To further ensure Crater 365 meets and supersedes your business needs, the company’s team of technology experts assists business owners analyze their business process by first defining the anticipated need or problem, identify and establish options, develop recommendations and solutions, finalize decisions, take action before deployment and integration of the application.
Oil and Gas companies in Nigeria today require Crater 365 capabilities to analyze historical data, forecast what might happen in the future to avoid operational issues before they occur, reduce waste and downtime, improve safety, and reduce risk and liability. Logistics and on-site materials can be managed using this same digital tools to reduce waste and optimize for just-in-time delivery, increasing productivity on the field. End-to-end services automate and optimize construction operations through the digital transformation of the asset lowering full-lifecycle asset costs. With this application, businesses can visualize their asset, check status, perform analysis, and generate insights to predict and optimize asset performance.
According to the company’s COO of Business Technology, Mr Isaac Oluwashola, “the right use of this workflows and automation technology and key operations processes in a focused and strategic effort will enable Oil & Gas companies in Nigeria to reduce the gap between the office and the site continually and will further enable them to automate and connect disparate tools, including fit-for-purpose software and cloud services from Crater365. This platform has the capabilities to provide next best practices and enable project teams to gain visibility and insights through data and analytics to improve production and supply planning, execution, reduce project costs, increase safety, reduce liability, improve capital project delivery and can prove repeatable workflows and technology integrations affecting interoperability, reporting, analytics, and digital twin delivery.
Our team of technology experts use analytical solutions to extract meaning from enormous volumes of data to help organizations improve their data-driven decision making. This strategy helps support the integration of project data across disciplines and teams, at every step of the production to supply process, for better collaboration to identify conflicts and risks. It will help transform the Nigerian Oil & Gas industry from its legacy document-centric paradigm to a complete digital space-time operating system. Project teams receive verification in near real-time for on-time, predictable, and on-budget project delivery.
For data security, data collected from plants is extremely important and will be protected. Only authorized people should be able to access to the information, as the modification of data by hackers could directly affect the decision-making and strategic planning process.
Let’s not forget that the potential for deep-sea and road transport for this sector is huge. Task profiles are more diverse within the supporting activities of each specific transport mode. Supporting activities for road freight and deep-sea transport have the greatest potential for further task automation. Automation and the availability of real-time data can have an impact on the planning of oil and gas transportation generally, including the necessary back-office processes.
Due to the enormous potential in efficiency in service delivery, customer convenience and experience, Crater365 have made it possible for industry players to migrate from the current rigid time-table operation of transport modes, both in terms of time and routes, to a much more flexible on-demand service that is tailored to the needs of oil and gas downstream and upstream sectors.
This approach is possible even without vehicle automation, but by means of crater365 automation integration. Our team ensures that the interaction between system users and machines user interfaces is not only safe and effective, but also satisfying for the user’.
Crater365 ecosystem is now recognized as one of the key drivers of digital transformation within Nigeria that enables organisations build business models for long term resilience and adding this new platform offering will further accelerate that transformation.
We believe that open collaboration and a commitment to improving the Nigerian O & G industry are the primary requirements for step-function advancement in digital construction, and will contribute to delivering a complete portfolio of digital solutions that are capable of moving the industry toward a more efficient and automated future.
Growth Focus for organisations is to partner with solution providers like Crater365, who can be your business transformation enablers to enhance smarter operations that will utilize technology to drive down operational costs and shift to lifecycle/ outcome based service mode
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Looking to the future
In the past years, several Nigerian based oil & gas companies have been seeking for ways to collaborate with solution providers to understand how automation technology can help them thrive in a low-price oil environment in addition to using advanced control systems. Crater365 launched their own automation platform, focusing on providing services such as cloud services, predictive analytics, remote monitoring, big data analytics, and cybersecurity, which is of paramount importance in this industry. Increased productivity, reduced operational and maintenance costs, increased profitability, increased efficiency, and improved plant optimization Managing capital projects operations, process plant operations lifecycle, Knowledge retention and transfer, Managed services, Field workforce automation and productivity. Shorter turnaround are the common benefits realized by customers who use this platform for their business operations. While the end goal of customers may be similar throughout this competitive environment, this does not mean they all require the same software services. The services offered by Crater365 automation experts give customers the flexibility and options for a customized tech solution.
Players in this sectors must adapt to this new technology and place much higher importance on getting their employees to adopt the technologies, using the new systems to boost executive decision-making capabilities and harnessing AI to identify new revenue opportunities.
As other industries increasingly harness the opportunities provided by Crater365, it is vital that the Nigeria oil & gas sector acts now and take the step to fully embrace this technology solution made available for the sector.
With safer operations and cost savings on the line, in addition to increased productivity, the industry can no longer afford to shy away from the digital future.
Jackson is a a platform Technology Content Writer
