Throughout the three decades of its existence, Pakistan State Oil has been one of the largest and most profitable companies of the country. It has time and again proved to be a trend-setter in a very dynamic industry. The story of PSO's Information Systems Department is similar; the IS Department keeping abreast of the changing scenarios, new technologies and ever-increasing user requirements.
The Information Systems Department was established in 1976, the year PSO was formed. For a long time, the IS Department was perceived merely as a data processing center. However, during the last few years, the top management thought proactively as to how the company can harness the potential of a modern, enabling IT department. This meant investments in technological resources and IT infrastructure. IS was envisioned to become a strategic business unit rather than a technical support function.
The last four-to-five years have observed an exponential growth in the users' demands on the Information Systems Department at PSO. Just a few years ago, a personal computer was a novelty.
The initial development needed for setting up the new infrastructure was the establishment of a Local Area Network (LAN). The project started in mid-2001 and was completed by the year 2002 and resulted in total connectivity of all the computers on each floor of PSO House.
The connectivity included mail server, ISA Server (proxy server and the firewall for security), Semantec Server (Anti Virus Server), NNM (Network Node Manager) and all the personal computers at PSO house, linked using cascaded manageable switches. Fiber optic connectivity was provided in the back plane.
Formal security and network monitoring policies were also drafted after the successful implementation of LAN at PSO House. The next logical step was the set-up of a Wide Area Network (WAN). In terms of investment, it was about nine times the LAN project and the aim was to connect all the locations of PSO all over the country to the head office and amongst each other where required, for seamless information exchange.
Before this, connectivity between PSO Head Office and remote locations was restricted to telephone lines and surface mail. Not only the set-up of WAN avoided delay in processing and disseminating information to the users, it also laid down the road needed for any integrated solution to drive on.
In this WAN project, fifty-three locations were connected to the head office via a Paknet cloud and ten locations via VSAT connections. Dial back modems were made available at each site providing for backup connections. Each remote site was provided with state-of-the-art servers, firewalls, UPS for maintaining full uptimes. While the communication technologies kept on improving day-in day-out, the stand-alone software solutions kept mushrooming. This meant loads of databases and redundant data in addition to duplication of efforts for data entry.
Multiple points of entry for the same data by different users in different departments led to confusion as well as inconsistent reporting. Envisioning the potential problems in future, if the state of the affair continued, PSO management embarked on the road to implement an integrated solution for the whole company. The solution would amalgamate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system and a single database, integrating people, processes and systems.
In February 2002, consultants were engaged to assist PSO in achieving these objectives. From the study of the existing systems and review of PSO's business and technical requirements, an Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP) was evolved that suggested, amongst other steps, implementation of a company-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
A comparison of such systems available in Pakistan was made after which the industry standard oil and gas solution of SAP R/3 was selected and got implemented with the help of local consultants. PSO purchased 11 modules of SAP to cover all aspects of its business, making this the most comprehensive SAP implementation within Pakistan.
January 1, 2005 witnessed the Go Live & Support Phase. All in all, the vision of every employee harnessing the maximum out of Information Systems Department is a reality now. They have one of the most advanced and modern ERP solutions at their disposal and are able to view and analyse real-time data from the length and breadth of PSO's operations.
Business benefits of SAP that the company is reaping are reliable sharing of information between different departments, faster, more confident and informed decision-making by the managers, standardised commodities and supplier codes, identification of interrelated supplier for purchasing leverage, etc.
Seamless integration has improved productivity and information transparency. The SAP solution has provided an integrated technology platform to improve the visibility and accuracy of data, leading to more consistent reporting.
There are various other state-of-the-art projects, which have been introduced or are in the process of being introduced at PSO. The IS Department is involved in these projects providing all the backend support.
One such project is the Online Order Management System, which was launched in June 2004 in Karachi and which has been expanded to include Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad and Multan. Through this system, our dealers, who are onboard, can order fuel online any time of day, seven days a week from any part of the world, and plan their inventory accordingly.
Terminal Automation System (TAS) is another such project. It provides an interface that transfers loading information for shipment business processes between the SAP system and TAS.
PSO, as part of its Retail Automation Program, installed Pump Controllers at its New Vision Retail Outlets to automate the flow of transaction data from the fuel-dispensing unit to the Point of Sale (PoS) Terminal. This means that from the time of fuelling to making payment against PSO Cards, the entire operation is automatic and without any intervention from the pump attendant, thus, ensuring, security, reliability, accuracy and convenience for the customer.
The pump controller maintains complete history of all the fuelling transactions made from the dispensing units so if a customer wishes to check back the amount or the volume dispensed in his vehicle after he/she has driven off the outlet, then the information can be made available with a touch of a button.
PSO has recently achieved another milestone by deploying a state-of-the-art Video Conferencing (VC) equipment at the PSO Head Office and five remote locations ie Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan. This technology not only helped PSO in curtailing travelling and hotel expenses but also assisted the management in making quick communication and quick decision-making by having weekly CFTs with remote offices through VC technology.
Currently, the VC system runs on terrestrial links that causes some problems in smooth running of the system. Therefore, the IS Department is working on different technologies to acquire a smooth, reliable and cost-effective solution.
Efforts by the IS Department are in concurrence with the company's vision of "delivering value to customers as an innovative and dynamic company that gets to the future first" by acquiring the latest and effective technologies first.
For Information Technology Department, PSO is following the policy of continuous improvement through innovation. New innovations in networking and communications areas are regularly being evaluated and if found feasible are deployed. Some of the emerging technologies to be deployed by PSO in near future are WI MAX, IDIRECT (VSAT) and MPLS.