SAP
comprehensive solution for natural gas companies
Posted: 11 June 2003
SAP announced a new initiative to provide a comprehensive solution
covering the unique business processes of companies in the rapidly
growing natural gas market.
The announcement was made at the World Gas Conference held in Tokyo,
Japan.
As oil and gas companies expand their services and reach across
the globe in newly deregulated markets, SAP taps the capabilities
of its industry-specific solution portfolios, SAP for Oil &
Gas and SAP for Utilities, to create the first offering to meet
the specific business demands of the natural gas industry.
By enhancing its leading solutions for the petroleum and energy
industries with tailored functionality, SAP will enable natural
gas companies to streamline supply chain processes, efficiently
master the financial and logistic complexities of deregulation,
and gain a competitive edge as they expand their enterprises into
new territories.
Marked by untapped reserves, steadily increasing demand, and new
opportunities opened up by the continuing deregulation of markets
across the globe, the natural gas market is widely predicted to
experience significant future growth and has thus become a market
of key strategic focus for major energy companies.
Although billions of dollars have been invested in exploration
as well as infrastructure for transporting gas from remote locations,
the market faces additional challenges across the complete gas value
chain, such as insufficient transparency in financial and logistic
processes and lack of data exchange standards for efficient cross-enterprise
collaboration.
“As the world economies turn the corner toward renewed expansion,
energy will be among the first sectors to anticipate the growing
demand. For a number of reasons, natural gas is uniquely suited
to satisfy a growing portion of this growth, ” said Dave Woll,
vice president, the ARC Advisory Group. “The management of
individual operations from production through utilisations has evolved
to a high level of operational excellence. However, the breadth
of this supply chain and the complexity associated with the movement
and scheduling of a compressible product poses a formidable integrated
management challenge. SAP’s foresight in identifying the natural
gas supply chain for their comprehensive solution has the potential
to deliver impressive returns for themselves and their customers.”
The SAP joint initiative pools the expertise of SAP’s industry
business units Oil&Gas, Utilities, Chemicals, and Mining to
address the specific business processes of the natural gas industry.
Best-in-class functionality from SAP’s industry solution
portfolios will help gas companies take advantage of opportunities
in newly opened markets by optimising processes across the entire
gas value chain—from exploration and production to transmission,
distribution, third-party access, and retail.
SAP is tailoring the sophisticated supply chain management capabilities
integral to SAP for Oil & Gas and integrating recent developments
that are helping utility companies master the complexities of enforced
deregulation, such as financial and energy data management from
SAP for Utilities.
The solution will cover the entire value chain of the natural gas
business from reservoir to end consumers.
On the upstream side, the solution fully supports the tracking
and valuation of all gas volumes produced across complex production
networks.
Functionality for joint venture management and production sharing
agreements with local authorities will enable gas companies to achieve
full transparency of all relevant costs, such as OPEX (operating
expenditures) and CAPEX (capital expenditures), and thereby efficiently
manage partner relations and accounting for cost and revenue sharing.
To help natural gas companies improve supply chain and work management
processes, SAP draws on proven functionality from its leading solutions
and industry portfolios, covering offshore logistics management,
demand planning, transmission management, and network balancing
with SAP Advanced Planning and Optimiser (SAP APO) in mySAP Supply
Chain Management (mySAP SCM), as well as management of service processes
and assets with Asset and Work Management in SAP for Utilities,
a mission-critical functionality especially for transmission and
distribution companies.
To enable more accurate forecasting and to provide companies the
necessary flexibility for gas trading and acquisition, SAP is also
making industry-specific enhancements to SAP Trader’s and
Scheduler’s Workbench (SAP TSW), a key component of the SAP
for Oil & Gas and SAP for Mining solution portfolios.
The new industry offering for natural gas companies will also comprise
the scalable, deregulation-enabled billing engine in SAP for Utilities
to enable fast time-to-market span for new energy products and quick
adjustments to rapidly changing legal requirements.
By drawing on energy data management and sales capabilities of
SAP for Utilities, the solution will enable natural gas companies
to efficiently execute complex sales and billing processes caused
by deregulation, such as third-party reconciliation and settlements.
To support decision making and enable gas companies to evaluate
customer energy usage, plant maintenance, and financial data, mySAP
Business Intelligence (mySAP BI) will be enhanced with industry-specific
content. In addition, mySAP Enterprise Portal will provide enterprise-wide,
role-based access to key data.
SAP NetWeaver, SAP’s application and integration platform,
acts as the open, flexible foundation that supports the cross-enterprise
efficiencies made possible by mySAP BI and mySAP Enterprise Portal.
In addition, the offering will leverage the utility industry-specific
functionality in mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM)
to empower marketing and sales forces to better address both residential
and industrial customers and enhance customer service with service
management capabilities for connection, installation, and meter
reading management.
“SAP is tapping a wealth of industry expertise as a trusted
and innovative advisor for both utilities and oil and gas companies
to create a comprehensive solution that is unparalleled in the natural
gas market,” said Nils Herzberg, senior vice president, Manufacturing
& Distribution, SAP AG. “With best-in-class functionality
from our proven industry solution portfolios, SAP will provide leading
edge technology to integrate people, information, and business processes
in the natural gas industry, enabling companies to drive new efficiencies
and seize revenue opportunities in this fast-growing global market.”
SAP is the leading business application provider in the oil and
utilities industries; with 97 per cent of Fortune 500 oil companies
running SAP and a 40 per cent global market share in the utilities
industry (85 percent in Germany). The new tailored solution for
natural gas companies will be available for customers on a global
basis at the end of 2003.
SAPPHIRE 2003 Orlando
Leading small, midsized, and large enterprises from around the world
will outline how they use SAP solutions to achieve business success
at SAPPHIRE ’03, SAP’s international customer conference
being held in Orlando, Florida, June 16-18.
About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions.
Through mySAP Business Suite, people in businesses around the globe
are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining
operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their
supply chains.
The unique core processes of various industries, from Aerospace
to Utilities, are supported effectively by SAP's 23 industry solutions.
Today, more than 19,600 companies in over 120 countries run more
than 62,000 installations of SAP software.
With subsidiaries in over 50 countries, the company is listed on
several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE
under the symbol "SAP."
For more information see http://www.sap.com.
Posted by Richard Price,
Editor Pipeline Magazine
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