Online services help BPCL expand customer base

Prasanna Upadhyay / Mumbai

Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) was one of the earliest players to join the Internet services bandwagon. While business to business services (B2B) were launched in 1999, business to consumer services (B2C) were launched in 2001. Right from buying naphtha to other industrial products such as fuels and solvents, to ordering a refill of a liquefied petroleum gas cylinder, BPCL customers can do all these at the click of a mouse. It’s no wonder that BPCL is today conducting business worth Rs 18 crore every day.

The company believes that the Net will play a significant role in its business in terms of intralink Internet, e-mail communication for commodities, supply-chain management, marketing and customer relationship management.

The company has successfully achieved B2B integration in the form of a digital document exchange with Asian Paints, the first of its kind in the country. BPCL is planning to extend this to other customers in future. The initiative under the B2B segment covers about 7,000 customers, the BPCL spokesperson said.

BPCL staff have to respond to customer e-mail enquiries within 48 hours. The company has Web-enabled its order receiving system for the B2B segment, where the bulk consumer can place his order at any hour of the day. The system also tracks the consumption pattern of the consumer and sends reminders regularly through e-mail.

This is beneficial to industrial consumers as it helps them plan their procurement orders better as they know the company’s stock position in various depots. The company receives orders from 400 segments spread across different locations, he added.

On an average, 1.4 lakh e-mails are exchanged between BPCL employees and customers everyday. A study carried out by the company shows that the intranet has helped the company save up to 30 percent in document printing and distribution costs as well as in long-distance landline communications costs within the enterprise.

The company official added that technology is becoming the fundamental building block of organisational change. Almost all the activities of the company are complemented in some way by on-ground activities and vice-versa. For its domestic customers, BPCL went beyond just LPG refilling. It added to its initiatives the PetroCard and SmartFleet which are used offline but the company plans to use them for relationship management as customer tracking and bill presentation tools to strengthen its presence on the Net. The cards can also help the company in tracking how much fuel was purchased by a customer and the waiting time at its petrol pumps.

This was necessary for the company with its vast network of petrol pumps and petroleum products distribution network. BPCL has a vast network in India, with 4,510 gas stations, 967 kerosene dealers and 1,389 LPG distributors, woven together by an internal VSAT (very small aperture terminal) network of more than 250 terminals. The company is using modules from different infotech companies, depending on their specialisations.

BPCL has an ESM (Extensible System Monitor) solution in place to facilitate centralised control of a huge network of computers located across different places to ensure that all IT facilities function in an integrated manner. “The intranet and related technology have brought in major changes. Earlier, the staff felt restricted due to lack of quick access to information,” said the official.

BPCL is using IBM’s Tivoli software solution to effectively manage the company’s IT assets and maintain the network. BPCL has partnerships with vendors such as Microsoft for applications like exchanges, messaging, knowledge management, e-mail and basic communication. The company is in the process of Web-enabling its various business processes after a pre-determined incubation period.

After e-business, the logical step was e-banking. The e-banking initiatives have brought in collections of nearly Rs 40 crore. The company is now aiming to bring 20 percent of its customers under the ambit of e-banking.

—The Financial Express