How to keep oil and gas pipelines flowing

The oil and gas industry plays an indispensable role in an increasingly complex world

Volatile market conditions combined with the current economic downturn, sees the lowest price per barrel for 20 years. This brings obvious challenges. In recent times, there has been a surge in the number of oil and gas companies deploying new technology and business software such as cloud based procurement, data warehousing and business analytics.

Such solutions don’t just cater for the transient needs of the organisation; they also help with corporate responsibility and compliance. Systems of this type also help to minimise operational expenditure where joint venture activity exists.

Many CIO’s and finance professionals find it difficult to navigate the complex and fragmented landscape when looking for service providers to assist with consulting, implementation, and support of new systems.

How to save operational spend

Oil and gas companies are constantly fighting margin pressures caused by the falling oil price, market volatility, capital intensive projects and challenging environments. Some organisations have inefficient procurement processes, which can contribute to increased operational expenditure; and this is one area of significant opportunity. Companies can review their processes and, with help from oil and gas solution provider TouchstoneEnergy, they can define operating models that are more efficient. There is always a desire to achieve tighter controls and better compliance. Typically companies know what they are buying and from whom. The inefficiency is the buying process itself with a too-high proportion of spend being off-contract and without appropriate approval.

A mobile and transient workforce means that the desire to follow a defined business process can result in increased costs. Approval timescales can often exceed 45 days resulting in strained supplier relationships.

TouchstoneEnergy’s procurement solution enables you to rapidly address inefficient procurement processes and reduce costs; but still adhere to corporate standards and buying policies.

PROACTIS

TouchstoneEnergy’s solution of choice is PROACTIS; a mature Cloud based Purchase to Pay and Source to Contract. Seamlessly integrated with INFOR SunSystems (the leading Finance and Management Information system), PROACTIS incorporates everything from RFQ and eSourcing to supplier contracts, call off and ad-hoc ordering, DOA compliance and receipting through to invoice matching and approval. All of this, whilst keeping tight control over committed and actual expenditure against budget.

Using a single organically grown procurement platform – PROACTIS makes it easy to maintain control of spend when it happens and within defined authority levels. This is a completely different approach from some competitors who may satisfy only a portion of the end-to-end process. PROACTIS provides a complete audit trail of who approved the purchase and when. The company can also ensure that the invoice matches the contracted price in order to avoid costly overpayments. PROACTIS provides real-time visibility of expenditure, analysed, for example, by product, supplier, asset, AFE or employee, which empowers the organisation to negotiate better pricing.

TouchstoneEnergy offers advanced reporting and analytics to give visibility of spend by AFE and budget to ensure owners remain within their limits.

Available on most mobile devices, PROACTIS enables field-based personnel to easily review and approve documents resulting in a much faster approval process.

Edited from source by Stephanie Roker

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/28012016/how-to-keep-oil-and-gas-pipelines-flowing/