O&G Pipeline Leader Achieves Operational Excellence Through Order-to-cash Transformation

As the energy sector evolves to compete in a fast-paced world, efficient order-to-cash processes are critical to ensure smooth transactions and enhance operational efficiency. Modernizing and automating these processes will be imperative for midstream companies to stay responsive to market demands. Recognizing this need, Infosys brings together cross-functional expertise to design and deliver pioneering solutions for business advantage. We recently collaborated with an American energy pipeline operator to create a compelling business case customized to the client's requirements. The Infosys solution resulted in enhanced operational efficiency and improved revenues.

Client Brief

The client is a logistics leader in the oil and gas (O&G) infrastructure sector, specializing in the transportation, storage, and distribution of refined petroleum products and crude oil. They serve key US markets, ensuring domestic energy security as part of the US federal government’s critical infrastructure, while providing low-cost, environmentally safe modes of transportation.

However, their order-to-cash process relied on a legacy business system that was around two decades old. The system was in need of an urgent upgrade to meet evolving business needs and regulatory compliance. Without any success in past upgrade attempts, business teams were spending more time on defect resolution than on market development. They needed a solution to seamlessly integrate nominations, physical ticketing, inventory tracking, reporting, and billing to streamline operations across their vast network.

Challenges

Grappling with complex business processes that posed risks to their core operations, the client faced challenges in estimating work scale and overcoming technical inadequacies while struggling with agile implementation. The client’s struggle with adopting the latest development standards and the underutilization of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions had further complicated their operations.

Infosys Solution

Six different units from Infosys came together to implement a product-centric, hyper-productive, business-led transformation for the client. Our strategies targeted building modular components that improved scalability and flexibility. We sequentially developed network configuration and rule management, laying the groundwork for future expansion. Leveraging open-source secure products, we achieved a balance between cost optimization and speed.

The Infosys teams worked on establishing quality processes, creating testbeds, optimizing team structures, improving governance, educating the client on the agile approach, and applying agile practices to the workflow. The result – facilitation of early business involvement and feedback, as well as the foundation for a culture of continuous improvement. Our teams provided enhanced DevOps pipelines and automation capabilities for more efficient deployment across environments.

Our solution included strengthening client infrastructure for advanced reporting technologies and analytics for actionable insights. Through our value-driven approach, we prioritized high-impact components over effort, and user-friendly interactive training for enhanced customer experience.

Business Benefits

Infosys leveraged its offshore-based distributed agile teams to achieve remarkable cost savings and reusability for the client. We reshaped their network, technology and operational infrastructures, as well as security tools, reducing the cycle time for month-end close activities from 20 to 7 days. With faster time to market, the client introduced new product lines ahead of their competition.

Our automation and productivity enhancements delivered an impressive 84% improvement in efficiency and estimated additional savings of US $720,000. Infosys’ transformation of the client’s existing business system improved performance accuracy and ease of use, leading to downstream opportunities and the movement of over 400 million barrels of petroleum products since going live. The next-generation business system has been widely recognized as a game-changer across the O&G industry.

Sriram Sundar, VP & Business Head- Energy Core, Infosys