Oil and gas industry managers and executives with years of experience make big decisions based on instinct driven by a long history, and “sometimes” borne out by data. Now, digital offers downstream players the opportunity to drive better, faster decisions across the enterprise—decisions that can minimize risk and loss while sparking new value and growth.
Having wrung out almost all cost-savings from their operations, downstream energy is digging deeper in a quest for better results. It’s time to pivot to the new, embracing digital as a way to make decisions across the enterprise that are based on information rather than instinct. Digital interventions could boost the value chain potential:
Storage and inventory optimization
1-3%
Customer segmentation and marketing
1-5%
Profit-at-risk optimization
5-10 %
Supply-demand and price forecasting
2-5 %
Price and contract optimization
1-2%
Deploying digital across downstream energy that traditionally works in independent siloes requires investment and commitment. For an industry that has long relied on experience and instinct, the change will not be easy and should focus on three key areas:
Implement digital technology to
connect all data sources to a centralized platform.
Design an analytics blueprint to determine which parts of the business and operations need to factor into various decisions.
Prepare and retrain executives to
trust decisions that are data-driven
and executed at lower levels of
the organization.
Senior Manager, Accenture Strategy – Energy
