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Business Questions Refinery Operations Stakeholders Need to Answer

Refinery Operations are complex by nature requiring cross functional, multi-system data entry and data validation aligned with enterprise governance standards to answer business critical questions needed .  This process can take hours and hours of human effort to perform repetitive, yet critical tasks.  These tasks lead to business questions requiring timely data like.

Common Business Questions Asked by Refinery Operations

These questions are critical to the health of the business. However, business process complexity often hinders productive teams from providing up-to-the-moment data needed by management.  Robotic process automation (RPA) offers a better solution. By documenting the steps involved in answering these questions, RPA can perform these manual processes much faster. 

Key Robotic Process Automation Opportunities for Refinery Operations

Automating Policy Checklists
Upload movements data
Uploading feedstock logistics tickets
Uploading weather data and supply events
Automating Policy Checklists
Upload movements data
Uploading feedstock logistics tickets
Uploading weather data and supply events

3 Top Uses for Robotic Process Automation
in Refinery Operations CTRM Systems ​

Reconciling Actualization and Payment

Verifying shipments, deliveries, and quantities and assigning them to the correct orders and invoices can be performed flawlessly and quickly with CTRM robotic process automation.  Bots can scan invoices, compare them to contract terms, pinpoint discrepancies and reconcile discrepancies, and initiate payments with minimal human intervention to capture early payment discounts and eliminate late fees.

Automating Feedstock Monitoring

The journey from well to refinery may involve several transfers: pipelines, barges, trucks, trains, etc., each with unique fees, terms, bills of lading, etc. The RPA services Value Creed offers are specifically designed to flow the correct data source files to CTRM software platforms and then into popular destination systems like Oracle ERP, NetSuite ERP and SAP ERP or others.

Highlight Optimal Hedging Opportunities

By automatically reconciling hedged/unhedged positions, RPA gives traders the insights they need to predict demand and pricing for both feedstock and refined products. Instant updates allow quick action to cover exposures and identify trade books that do not conform to the organization’s hedging guidelines.

How Robotic Process Automation for Invoice Reconciliation Works

This video shows how automating common business processes accelerates workflow
and improves accuracy

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Value Creed’s RPA Governance

Proper RPA initiation,optimization, and management requires an integrated, enterprise-wide solution. Unfortunately, many energy refiners are too busy with business development and operations to devote the resources to build RPA at a scale that can deliver tangible results. Value Creed RPA: Control, Efficiency, Profitability

CTRM Robotic Process Automation Governance Model Video

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How to Get Started with Robotic Process Automation

Value Creed’s robotic process automation services streamline business processes, alleviate major data entry bottlenecks and reduce the time humans spend on low level, repetitive tasks with “bots. 

CTRM Process for Identifying RPA Opportunities

You know RPA is not a new concept, it is just now truly useful to CTRM/ETRM business leaders and IT teams.  The use of this advanced technology helps by  expediting complex CTRM business processes, while relieving associated data integrity risks.

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BUSINESS PROCESS CHALLENGES

Consider the Effect Complex CTRM Business Processes Have On Performance

How much time do your traders, schedulers, and accountants spend manually entering data into multiple applications, updating contracts by hand from emailed PDFs, comparing orders to fulfillment, or updating positions? We’re willing to bet it’s too much. 

These facts make finding modern solutions to critical, yet repetitive tasks paramount. Explore how these tasks are being improved using robotic process automation.

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RPA RATIONALE

Why Robotic Process Automation Is Changing The Way CTRM Workflows Are Done

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA,  is not new, but rather new to CTRM systems.  RPA enables commodity producers, traders and providers to rely on software robots to do repetitive, documentable tasks performed by front, middle and back office staff members today.  Time spent on these tasks can be reclaimed and allocated to higher-value programs.

80% of Your Repetitive Processes Can Be Handled By Robotic Process Automation

Robotic-Process-Automation-Opportunity-80-Percent-CTRM-Process
Robotic-Process-Automation-Opportunity-80-Percent-CTRM-Process

USE CASES/APPLICATION

Proven Use Cases for Major Industries Using CTRM Software

Value Creed’s turnkey services put the power of RPA CTRM at your fingertip, no matter where your company operates in the energy production/marketing/distribution stream:

Refinery
Operations

Contract and inventory management, settlement, and ordering, automation drives better decisions in a climate of price and demand volatility.

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Natural Gas Marketing

RPA can trigger proper responses to pipeline imbalances to mitigate disruption and penalties and flow EBB postings through settlement and invoicing.

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Producer
Operations

RPA shares data from land leases, pricing contracts, receipt tickets, and statement validation for fully integrated record-to-report workflow.

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Crude Marketer Operations

RPA can be employed in the reconciliation of meter tickets to terminal scale tickets, allowing for quicker agreement on receivables/payables to speed up the cash cycle.

Airlines

Use of automation to simplify and speed the agreement with multiple location fuel suppliers increases accuracy and decreases time needed to identify and resolve discrepancies.

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Refined Fuel Suppliers

Automate scheduling by reading BOL data send via emails or downloadable PDFs from various counterparties, incident management, billing queries, user administration and updating records and to automatically set up and run processes.

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PROVEN TECHNOLOGIES

Robotic Process Automation Technology Proven for CTRM Systems

Value Creed’s robotic process automation service harnesses software technology to emulate human interactions with digital systems and software. 

These software robots can be programmed to “read” computer screens and digital documents, carry out a complicated series of keystrokes, instructions, navigate systems to  identify and extract data, and perform a wide range of user-defined actions. And, they can do it faster and more consistently than people.

 

RPA IN CTRM SYSTEMS

Watch and learn how you can identify and deploy RPA bots in place of repetitive, manual tasks for complex business processes. 

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USE CASES/APPLICATION

With RPA solutions specifically suited to CTRM platforms, your organization will see the power of taking tasks that now may require staff augmentation just to address, like month, quarter or year end invoice reconciliation, and replace this extraneous staffing costs with digital robots designed to support your in-house staff by performing tedious, complicated, or routine tasks rapidly and automatically. We can set up RPA solutions that address every part of your business.

Consider every stakeholder and every opportunity for RPA, now that you have an understanding of the overall concept and can conceptualize opportunities.  If you are ready to organize this process, reach out to the Value Creed team to discover next steps or just to better plan for this effort as you transform your manual processes into automated operations.

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PROVEN TECHNOLOGIES

Building business processes powered by robotic process automation should be considered a marathon, not a sprint. Fortunately, there are several small, early victories companies can achieve to generate momentum and interest within their organizations. Start by establishing RPA as a natural evolution that will further innovation and productivity. Assign enthusiasts who can inspire their co-workers to adopt the process and evangelize their successes.

With a few pilot program wins in place, it will be easier to train the entire IT team to design and implement custom automations.  Once you’re off and running, the next RPA stage involves integrating bot development into a DevOps workflow so automation projects run continuously and concurrently with testing, troubleshooting, and integration.

After a couple of years, you will have a mature RPA process. Value Creed is here to help you take the first step. 

CTRM ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION SUCCESS

This case study highlights how a Refined Fuel Supplier worked with Value Creed to develop robotic process automations to:

  • Recapture valuable person hours formerly spent comparing 100’s of Counterparty Bill of Landing formats
  • Reallocate time spent entering shipment tracking into scheduling, actualization and billing
  • Sending automated emails related to BOL data
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Recommended: CTRM Case Studies

Ready to Get Robotic Process Automation Working for your CTRM Platform?​

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The logistics module in CTRM systems is one of the best areas for Robotic Process Automation applications because the processes are structured and well-defined, performed multiple times a day, and use the same views. RPA will increase efficiency and data consistency while eliminating manual data entry errors.

Watch this brief video to learn about how the process is performed and see how we used three RPA bots to automate the entire logistics process.

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