SAP implementation at Pakistan State Oil (PSO) is the largest in the nation's energy sector, encompassing the entire operation of an integrated downstream oil marketing company involving nearly 63 locations across the country.
This has certainly been the boldest technological initiative by PSO, a company that can rightly claim a leadership position in the field of technology-driven products and services.
SAP is normally conceived as just software, which supports Enterprise Resource Planning. However, the potential effect of SAP on any corporate entity entails much more than mere computerisation of processes and is a step towards paper-less society.
SAP as a management tool has the capability to do much more than what is defined by its application resources. It has the potential to change the way people work, it introduces the function of standardisation and uniform applicability in the processes as such acts as a training resource and improves the performance capability of the user.
The legacy user normally has to perform his assigned functions and carry out the monitoring activities him-self, as against this the SAP user is provided with a tool, which has already standardised through its configuration, the entire process, as such the monitoring requirements are limited only to a very minimal level and even those are instantaneously monitored through various alarm indicators. This means that the user can perform more while the system monitors the output indicating the correction requirements in real time span.
In PSO, SAP implementation covers a very wide process area: Material Management, Sales & Distribution, Transportation & Distribution, Silo Management, Finance & Controlling, Human Resource & Salaries, Project Systems, Quality Management, Plant Maintenance, Production Planning, Trader's & Scheduler's Workbench, Business Information Ware House and Specialised Applications.
The modules cover all business and support functionalities in the present scenario and also have the capability of covering any future requirements for expansions within these functionalities.
A clear indicator of the accuracy, efficiency and systemisation of business activities, which can be achieved through SAP, it translates into the capability of the organisation to more accurately forecast its projections based on real-time inputs for achieving improved results and survive a highly competitive environment. All this translates to higher profitability through better planning and an assignment oriented work force.
Another advantage of SAP implementation is the upgrading of work force through training and re-engineered processes. While SAP improves the process it also forces its user to apply only the correct way for performing an activity, no space is available for short cuts or unverifiable inputs. As such it accepts only the correct information.
In its efforts to achieve good results from SAP implementation, PSO has so far carried out various levels of training for preparing its work force for SAP functions. A total of 59,000 hours of training have been imparted to 603 employees, while 32 in-house trainers and 15 in-house functional experts developed.
The SAP training has developed various resources for the company to maintain the SAP function, through which we have been able to develop specialists or consultants for each major module, who would be able to carry out adjustments or enhancements as required in future.
SAP implementation has assisted PSO in preparing the company to face future challenges and competitions, which will emerge out of product de-regulation and through activities of new entrants in energy marketing.
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