Oil companies are under unprecedented pressure to reinvent themselves in a bid to maintain profits. As a consequence, they are turning to IT as a competitive tool to help reduce the cost of rolling out and maintaining their infrastructure.
In turn, IT service providers have had to devise and design their solutions to align with changing market conditions and consumer demands The pace of change in the market is underscored by oil companies` diversifying into commercial operations - signified over the past few years by the proliferation of forecourt retail outlets and 24-hour convenience stores.
"The line between petrol and retail sales has blurred to the point where consumers don`t always consider petrol their primary purchase at service stations along the country`s major road networks," says Guy Morgan, retail petroleum portfolio sales manager at IT services company Unisys Africa. "As a result, business technology service providers to the petroleum industry in SA, and in most other parts of the world have to rethink their approach to this market."
Unisys Africa has been the number one provider of point-of-sale (POS) solutions to oil companies for over eight years, with six of the top seven oil companies in the country as its clients. It maintains the hardware and software infrastructure of over 1 100 service stations for Shell, BP, Caltex, Total and Exel across South Africa and Africa (including Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya), with 15 to 20 new sites added to this network monthly.
"The greatest effects of commercial diversification have been felt in tier-one sites - those being the major service stations along national and provincial routes that sell everything from petrol to food, holiday-wear and travel accessories from onsite convenience stores," says Morgan. "Everything sold off the forecourt, both `wet` (petrol) and `dry` (consumables) stock, is managed by the same POS system, the PEC 8850 system from New Zealand`s Advantage Retail Solutions."
The PEC system, debuted by Unisys at Caltex and Shell, has become the industry-standard petroleum POS system in over 14 countries throughout Latin America, Southern Africa, south-east Asia and Australia. It offers oil companies a comprehensive stock management system - from the forecourt to the convenience store and service centre - with central management facilities over the Web and integrated electronic funds transfer (EFT) features as standard.
Morgan says no system, however advanced, is enough to build competitive advantage in an increasingly congested, albeit regulated industry, and service providers have to prove their value to keep pace with industry dynamics.
Unisys has also set up separate sales, consulting, training and business support teams as part of its retail petroleum portfolio to develop and deploy the different facets of forecourt management required by its different clients.
"We deal with our clients on a business level. Our senior consultants have over a decade`s experience working in the petroleum industry prior to joining Unisys, so we`ve made the culture of the industry part of our own business."
Morgan notes that this makes working with clients far more intuitive. With certified training centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and product champions in all major regions, Unisys teaches its clients how to operate and how to apply their knowledge of business to the systems provided.
"There`s a big difference between knowing how to generate a report and knowing how to use it to read performance metrics, and that`s where we see the bulk of our responsibility as a business partner."
Looking ahead, Morgan sees the emerging eFuel standard - the automatic petrol payment system implemented by some large oil companies in SA and extensively overseas - as a trend-setter for forecourt services in the coming year. He also expects the number of tier-one sites to level off, marking a sharp increase in the number of new second- and third-tier sites.
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