How Digital Transformation Delivered Business Transformation At Bharat Petroleum

*This is in partnership with BQ Prime BrandStudio

As a global Fortune 500 company and India's second-largest oil marketing company, Bharat Petroleum believes in collaborative innovation for growth. From introducing the Pure for Sure initiative or Speed, the first branded fuel, to innovative retail experiences in their fuel retail outlets, to loyalty and fuel quality assurance programmes, Bharat Petroleum has been first among peers. And as the automobile world increasingly goes electric, the company has innovated by launching India’s first electric vehicle charging corridor from Chennai to Tiruchirappalli. A business unit for renewables has also been set up.

With the kind of scale that Bharat Petroleum operates at, real-time visibility into all parts of the business is critical. There are eight marketing business units catering to various segments, 20,000 retail outlets, 65 oil installations and depots and 54 liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottling plants to supply the nation. 2.1 crore customers enter Bharat Petroleum fuel outlets every single day and five crore LPG cylinders are delivered every month. Mr Peethambaran Thankappan, Executive Director (IS & Digital Business), Bharat Petroleum, explains that energy major realised that a deeper understanding of the customer through data, and secondly, extreme efficiency in delivery, was critical for continued growth and market leadership. But the problem was—a customer entering a fuel retail outlet could also be an LPG customer, but there was no visibility on that front for the company.

Hence, the company decided to embark on a digital journey that was a transformational experience from the bottom up. Several focus groups were built to understand customer requirements and they included employees who were directly dealing with customers. Bharat Petroleum was clear that that technology alone could not deliver, and neither could a process do so by itself. But a combination of people, processes and technology could create digital magic and deliver business transformation. Employees at every level, from the Chairman and Managing Director, down to field personnel engaged in the effort as there was a feedback loop at every step.

Mr Peethambaran explains, “We joined hands with Accenture as our partner to develop our Digital nerve centre to have complete control and monitoring of all operating locations including our 20,000 retail outlets. The best part of this partnership was that Bharat Petroleum brought our deep understanding of the business while Accenture delivered the best technology available, and from this IRIS emerged.” IRIS digitally reimagined the energy giant's extensive sales and distribution network. Accenture used its capabilities in data, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies for this digital platform that was deployed in a short span, during the height of pandemic-driven disruption. Given the important of cybersecurity, data security was top-of-mind in designing IRIS and how it would operate.

BPCL also brought many digital interventions on the customer front to bring in ease of doing business. Hello BPCL is one of them, a super app that serves as a digital commonplace to help customers get a unified view of their dealings with Bharat Petroleum, while the company also gets a complete view of each customer. Similarly, a chatbot called Urja was launched in 13 languages, enabling customers to interact in their language of choice. Almost 25,000 to 30,000 LPG cylinder bookings per day now come through Urja and total interactions in Urja is more than a lakh every day.

IRIS connects with various customer touch points across the country in real-time, from fuel retail outlets to LPG plants, fuel depots, etc., and continuous monitoring of 60,000 plus machines—from retail outlets to plants—is now possible. This constant monitoring is done to build customer confidence at various touch points. For example, there could be a concern about the price being charged at a retail outlet. IRIS monitors all connected retail outlets and check whether the correct Retail Selling Price (RSP) is pushed to dispensing units at 6 AM every day. If the correct RSP has not been pushed at 6 AM to a particular outlet, IRIS prevents the outlet from selling fuel until the RSP is corrected.

Quality is another big reason why customers trust Bharat Petroleum. To enhance trust, the system ensures each tanker carrying fuel is digitally locked inside the depot under geo-fencing. If a driver deviates from a standard route from depot to outlet, IRIS sent an alert and then blocks the vehicle as per the pre-determined logic. And during unloading at a retail outlet, IRIS monitors if the correct product is being unloaded through video analytics and ATG—Automated Tank Gauging system. This means that every tank is continuously monitored through IRIS. IRIS goes up to the point of delivery to the customer. If nozzles delivering fuel have not been tested and checked for accuracy of supply as per the maintenance schedule, IRIS ensures that the machine cannot dispense fuel.

A great example of how IRIS protected Bharat Petroleum customers and the company’s reputation for quality, was during recent floods in Chennai. 56 outlets saw water seepage into underground fuel storage tanks. IRIS automatically detected seepage and blocked sales at the 56 outlets to ensure that water in the underground tank did not cause issues for customers.

Another benefit has been improved safety. The system monitors super critical activities at all operating locations across the country. If a contractor is permitted to do a super critical activity at some part of a plant, IRIS monitors work through video, and tracks when work starts and stops each day, but also raises alerts in case work continues beyond the permitted time each day or sends an alert to stop work if the video feed stops working. If a worker is not wearing safety-related personal protective equipment (PPE) IRIS alerts managers so the anomaly can be corrected immediately.

The IRIS platform also triggers automated alerts and actions, including rapid response to equipment failures or hazardous situations. This can help to increase sales at fuel retail outlets by minimising infrastructure downtime and ensuring consistent fuel quality, as well as improving customer experience.

Customer experience is also enhanced based on the data that IRIS generates, which helps Bharat Petroleum introduce new innovations. For instance, data showed that the process of filling fuel, paying cash, or waiting to swipe a card, etc., could be lengthy and frustrating for some customers. Hence, a new digital product called Ufill was introduced. Through Ufill, customers can pay in advance at their convenience and receive a QR code, which they scan at the retail outlet and reset the Multi Product Dispenser (MPD) without any manual intervention. The entire process is automated, with only the nozzle to be inserted into the open fuel cap on the vehicle. Once the requisite quantity of fuel is pumped, the machine nozzle cuts off automatically and the customer can place the nozzle back on the MPD and immediately drive away. There is no manual intervention in the whole fuelling activity, other than placing and taking out the fuelling nozzle to the vehicle.

As Mr Peethambaran looks back on the remarkably successful rollout of IRIS that has digitally transformed the company, he adds, “As I see it, if you want to deliver an ace product, you need to have an ace culture. In an ace culture, I see alignment, clarity and energy, which is what ACE stands for. As for our relationship with Accenture—these three alphabets fit in exactly. The whole company was aligned for the digital transformation though extensive focus group discussions and Accenture also ensured a smooth handshake. We had clarity from the very first day on what we were asking for and Accenture could assist us with world class technology. And regarding energy, both sides displayed unlimited energy and proof of this was deployment of IRIS in the shortest possible time.

Mr Peethambaran believes that IRIS has helped to sharpen the customer focus at Bharat Petroleum. “We built IRIS to benefit customers through trust, convenience and personalisation. The aim was to take away any customer concern and build trust. We also ensure that customers save time in the process. And when it comes to personalisation, we ensured that the our business analytics generates meaningful insights to go back and build new products that can improve the customer experience even further.”