Ongoing digital transformation at Bharat Petroleum in collaboration with Deloitte India delivering impact

• Aimed at enhancing customer experience, the digitalisation process will provide a single view of products and services across business units of Bharat Petroleum to the customers

An ambitious digital transformation project aptly named ‘Project Anubhav’ is underway at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL). The project which aims to enhance the customer experience across all touch points with BPCL, has been well received by customers and other stakeholders making an impact in the initial phase of deployment.

Bharat Petroleum has chosen Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP (Deloitte India) as their technology partner for this challenging project to help build, design and implement various customer focussed digital initiatives. These various initiatives will enable customers and other stakeholders to interact with each of Bharat Petroleum’s six business units of: Retail, Industrial and Commercial (I&C), LPG, Lubricants, Gas, and Aviation.

Initiated amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital transformation is aimed to deliver a unified and coherent customer experience, bringing trust, convenience, and personalisation in the delivery of products & services across business units to customers. To attract, acquire, and retain customers, Bharat Petroleum is aiming to provide an unified, consistent and touchless self-service experience to its 8.5 crore families consuming cooking gas, over 10,000 I&C customers, and over 1.2 crore vehicle owners who tank up every day at BPCL’s fuel stations.

With a single view of the customers across business units and through the power of data, the oil and gas major would be able to understand trends and consumption patterns and drive customer solutions across business units.

Undoubtedly, this digital transformation will result in more business opportunities to the BPCL channel partners and add value to all stakeholders. Employees too demand the same experience from the tools used to serve customers. BPCL’s customer facing field force will now be able to view customer information at a single place, helping them to devote more time in building relationships and new connections with customers.

Implemented in phases, the impact of ‘Project Anubhav’ is already visible:

• Customers can now engage in real time conversations with Bharat Petroleum through the Chatbot ‘Urja’ on the BPCL website & on WhatsApp, resulting in over 25 crore messages in over 1.3 crore interactions across 13 languages.
• Over 7000 businesses have also contacted the Urja Chatbot to initiate interaction with BPCL’s B2B businesses for their needs.
• Ufill – the smart, secure, swift fuelling solution launched across 65 cities has generated more than INR 8 Crores within the first month of its launch.
• The digital nerve centre ‘IRIS’ has integrated over 16,700 Retail Outlets, 80 Retail Terminals, 53 LPG plants and more than 25,000 Tankers. True to its name, is helping BPCL build a tamper proof distribution network by establishing compliance across the supply chain through automated alerts and actions, including rapid response to equipment failures or hazardous situations. IRIS can monitor over 3 million digital signals received through IOT sensors in the supply chain and updates concerned stakeholders with early warnings for emergencies.
• The corporate digital centre at BPCL’s head office in Mumbai gives an end-to-end view of its entire value chain in a 24-meter-long digital wall visually tracking key metrics. This enables senior leadership in rapid decision making.
• Mechanics, automobile workshops and lubricant retailers use the “Hello BPCL” mobile application to redeem MAK Lubricant vouchers worth Rs 5 lakhs daily.
• A world-class Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform enables their front-end sales team to manage their sales and service activities seamlessly – reducing lost sales through automated indenting and monitoring

In view of the much-needed consolidation, Deloitte India designed, and validated high-fidelity wireframes and clickable prototypes for a mobile app ‘Hello BPCL’ as the one-stop shop for BPCL’s products and services.

“The real success of this transformation is that we are now able to provide a single view of our products and services to our customers and at the same time provide a tamper-proof system that delivers quality and trust to our customers and business partners. In an uncertain and competitive business environment, we had to emerge differentiated and take a bold step and that is how, we embarked on this digital transformation journey. These technologies and innovations will build operational scale, strengthen our market share, and add to our continued growth trajectory”, said, Arun Kumar Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, BPCL. “While we have launched many of these new digital offerings, a few more are being developed to be released in the coming months.” 

“BPCL is reaping the benefits by creating this distinct advantage for themselves and their stakeholders. A programme of this scale requires vision, energy and speed of execution”, said Romal Shetty, President Consulting at Deloitte India. “We live in a highly connected digital world and technology is driving business model changes. The digital transformation journey is embedded in innovation, agility, flexibility, and transparency–each leading to quicker and better business decisions. For businesses to thrive in the new normal they also need to collaborate within their ecosystem and outside; we cannot achieve this transformation in silos.”

For BPCL and Deloitte India, the next phase in the digital transformation is now focussed on the Industrial & Commercial business that caters to large institutional customers. One such initiative is the end to end cycle of ordering online including visibility and tracking of orders through an e-commerce platform. The loyalty platform of the Retail business catering to individual vehicle owners (SmartDrive), fleet owners (SmartFleet) and corporates (PetroCorporate) is also being upgraded to a much-advanced loyalty programme (ALP), slated for release before the end of the year.

About Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL):

A Fortune Global 500 Company, Bharat Petroleum is the second largest Indian Oil Marketing Company and one of the premier integrated energy companies in India, engaged in refining of crude oil and marketing of petroleum products, with a significant presence in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry. The company attained the coveted Maharatna status, joining the elite club of companies having greater operational & financial autonomy. Bharat Petroleum’s Refineries at Mumbai & Kochi and subsidiary Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd., at Bina, Madhya Pradesh have a combined refining capacity of around 37 MMTPA. Its marketing infrastructure includes a network of installations, depots, retail outlets, aviation service stations and LPG distributors. Its distribution network comprises over 19,000 Retail Outlets, over 6,100 LPG distributorships, 733 Lubes distributorships, 123 POL storage locations, 53 LPG Bottling Plants, 60 Aviation Service Stations, 3 Lube blending plants and 4 cross-country pipelines. With a focus on sustainable solutions, the company is developing a vibrant ecosystem. Bharat Petroleum has been partnering communities by supporting innumerable initiatives connected primarily in the areas of education, water conservation, skill development, health, community development, capacity building and employee volunteering. With ‘Energising Lives’ as its core purpose, Bharat Petroleum’s vision is to be the most admired global energy company leveraging talent, innovation & technology.