Project Log

Restructuring BPCL’s intranet

BPCL had built a homegrown intranet that expanded organically, but it was becoming hard to locate and track information. Vikram Kumar speaks about the challenges of fine-tuning the portal

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is a Fortune 500 petroleum refining and distribution company with revenues of $12 billion. The massive scale of its operations can be seen from the fact that the company processes 2,60,000 barrels of crude per day, has 4,854 gas stations, a thousand kerosene dealers, and around 1,828 LPG distributors. Its refinery intranet portal (V-support), which is crucial for its operations, originated around two years back.

Lack of uniformity

Due to the scale of operations and hectic activity, the portal evolved into an unnavigable, overwhelming mass of information. This created a lot of complications for the user, making it difficult to navigate and locate relevant material. There was also a lack of uniformity between the portal pages due to the ad hoc content creation instead of template-based creation. It not only led to difficulties in performing basic departmental tasks, but also created complexity in site administration and management.

Role-based access

BPCL wanted the portal to support role-based information access. Additionally, the site had to be generated dynamically from a database. Access was to be provided to user departments for updating relevant content. Additionally, BPCL needed service-enabling performance tracking by monitoring information access requests. The organisation had evaluated off-the-shelf products such as SharePoint. Finally, the company decided to partner with MAQ Software.

Revamp and integrate

The objective of the project was to revamp and integrate the intranet portals which had acquired a complex structure over the years. We created an ASP/ASP.NET-based solution, introducing the database approach for storing and automatically publishing information, an approach that would both enhance performance and facilitate site content administration. The intranet portal was implemented as a three-tier application having a presentation layer, a business layer and a database access layer.

A well-designed intranet portal is the key to improving internal processes through efficient information access and sharing. Using custom Web solutions, BPCL revamped the refinery support portal with Microsoft ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The implementation streamlines the intranet portal pages for efficient use, maintaining uniformity across all refinery portal sites. It also provides an administration module for publishing and posting data or updates, making site management extremely elementary. This allows user departments to easily update information. SQL Server helps us to generate content dynamically and allows for easy back-ups of content. A performance-tracking module provides a performance matrix and even helps in generating monthly or yearly MIS reports.

The pay-offs

Two areas where the impact was significant were the reduced requests for information and better access to critical information such as safety management information. Also, it helped in better distribution of information through easy management and storage of circulars. There was a significant improvement in the productivity of site administrators through features such as templates and an easier-to-use interface. Further, there was efficient usage of site-automated performance measurement which allowed tracking of the site’s effectiveness. An unexpected benefit was the improved perception of outsourcing as the project was delivered before schedule.

In conclusion, intranet usability enhancements are crucial as they improve team productivity and make performance monitoring easier.

Solution at a glance

Organisation Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited Employees 13,000 Extensive Intranet Users 3,000 Intranet Refinery Units 6 The Challenge Revamp and integrate the intranet portal (V-support) that evolved over the years, acquiring a complex structure. Enhancements were required at various levels to simplify site management and make usage easy. Achievements Revival of refinery intranet portal using ASP.NET Easy navigation and consistent look makes extensive content usable Implementation of SQL Server 2000 technology to store dynamic circulars and news Implementation of ASP.NET to facilitate highly automated site administration and content management Tracking module to monitor user performance index/matrix Automated month/year MIS report generation and distribution

Vikram Kumar of MAQ Software spearheaded the project for BPCL