Read more about Verian’s oil & gas solutions

Watch a video that explains how automation works in the oil and gas industry

One the largest independent exploration and production companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico recently tapped Verian to help solve some of their biggest purchasing challenges.

The company’s purchasing process was mostly manual and paper-laden. Their inefficient paper-based requisition and purchase order process was extremely labor-intensive. Getting expenditures approved required several redundant steps. “Adding more people to push more paper didn’t make any sense to us,” said the firm’s director of logistics. “We had far too much duplication of effort in the manual processes we were using.”

In addition, the company’s purchasing and finance groups had no visibility into the approval process to identify the bottlenecks preventing items from being purchased and invoices from being paid. Finally, the company’s purchase-to-pay process potentially lacked compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. After evaluating five different solutions, the firm selected Verian Technologies.

“We selected Verian Technologies for several reasons. Not only do they understand our industry, they were also able to come in and easily integrate with our financial system,” says the company’s director of losgistics. “What sealed the deal was how easy their product is to operate. That’s critical for the thousands of offshore requisitioners we have on platforms throughout the Gulf of Mexico.”

Verian implemented Purchase Manager so the customer could associate spending with thousands of AFE (authorization for expenditure) codes. By integrating Purchase Manager with their financial system, the company could start seeing how much was spent and how much remained on all their capital budgets. It also meant that foremen could track spending on a well-by-well basis.

Almost immediately after the system went live, positive feedback started coming in from the field. Foremen liked the system because it started holding field staff accountable for their purchases. Buyers and accounting personnel were also enthusiastic about the system.

The director of logistics also found additional benefits from consolidating spending to fewer suppliers, enabling the purchasing team to drive lower prices. The launch of Purchase Manager also helped corral employees to buy only from contract vendors, further reducing costs.

In less than a year, the oil and gas company expects 10-12% annual cost reductions on all three categories of expenses  - he also expects the system will pay for itself in the same time period.

For more information about how oil and gas companies are strking it rich with Verian Technologies, contact us at 800-672-8776 or request more information online.