Both will be designed to improve bottom-line benefits including increased downstream operating margins with reduced risk and increased upstream production with lower costs.

The Connected Hydrocarbons Logistics solution (CHL) will provide real-time total inventory of oil and gas companies’ hydrocarbon supply chain. Cloud networking will connect companies with suppliers and partners, optimizing hydrocarbon supply chain movements, visibility into secondary costs, and reducing working capital. Using the latest SAP technologies such as SAP S/4HANA software and SAP HANA Cloud Platform, along with the role-based SAP Fiori user experience, CHL will complement and enhance the capabilities of SAP for Oil and Gas industry solutions and other SAP solutions with end-to-end visibility with real-time analytics and improved supply and demand planning.
 
Accenture and SAP will also expand their Upstream Production Operations collaboration which provides solutions and services supporting the upstream operations value chain including Upstream Operations Management, SAP UOM, and Accenture’s rapid deployment upstream SAP S/4HANA template, Accenture Upstream Direct. The SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution is also being extended to provide early identification of potential asset performance issues. This will enable upstream operators to enhance production volumes while reducing maintenance costs and planning.
 
“The hydrocarbon value chain is at the heart of the downstream business, and today’s fragmented and often outdated IT landscape prevents oil and gas companies from unlocking all of the available value,” said Andrew Smart, managing director who leads Accenture’s energy practice. “We look forward to working with SAP and our clients to use Connected Hydrocarbons Logistics to unlock this value by better managing changes in supply, demand and commodity prices. Similarly, the new predictive maintenance tool from SAP can help operators further enhance upstream operations, in an environment of sustained oil price volatility.”
 
“This expanded innovation program will deliver two key digital capabilities our customers are demanding; a real-time view of all their product inventories, and the ability to predict asset failures and prescribe their best sequence of repair,” said Ken Evans, Global Vice President, Oil and Gas Industry, at SAP. “Our digital readiness survey confirms that while over 80% of the industry sees these capabilities as important, less than 5% have either of them today. Our collaboration with Accenture expands the portfolio of solutions delivering such digital transformations to the oil and gas industry.”
 
The new solutions built for SAP S/4HANA will be co-developed by Accenture and SAP under their SAP S/4HANA collaboration with the participation of clients from both companies to ensure that specific industry needs are met. In October, Accenture and SAP announced their collaboration to develop the next generation of predictive analytics solutions for asset management in the utilities industry to enable condition-based maintenance.