Salesforce to help Bharat Petroleum power its digital transformation journey

Indian government-owned oil and gas company Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) has picked San Francisco based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions giant Salesforce to fuel its digital transformation journey 

As part of the partnership BPCL has deployed the Salesforce Sales Cloud to automate sales and the Service Cloud to improve customer engagement. BPCL added that professional services firm Deloitte, which is a Salesforce partner, designed and oversaw the deployment of the solutions and other processes in the partnership.  

Read: Accenture to digitize sales and distribution network of Bharat Petroleum 

Additionally, Salesforce has also deployed the Tableau CRM (formerly Einstein analytics), a solution that collects CRM data and applies artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics to help the company make better decisions, according to a statement.  

Tableau CRM will also provide customer insights, trends and is optimized for use on mobile, Salesforce said.  

The three solutions are expected to help BPCL digitize its manufacturing and distribution supply chain, with the end goal being to provide the company with a complete view of what’s happening across the board.  

“Salesforce enables increased collaboration between our sales and service functions, providing a single view of our customers to deliver an unmatched and hyper-personalized experience," Arun Singh, Director (Marketing) and Director (Refineries), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, said.  

In May 2020, BPCL launched ‘Anubhav’ a project aimed at providing a unified platform and experience for its multiple retail and commercial customer base.  The company has around 64,600 outlets and claims to have touched based with over 90 million individuals.  

Through Project Anubhav BPCL looks to adopt key technologies such as AI and Internet of things (IoT), along with implementing technology platforms such as the one with Salesforce.  

Read: Salesforce ramps up next-gen platform with slew of low-code upgrades 

“The oil and gas industry has progressed tremendously over the past few years to become a digitally mature industry. We look forward to building a strategic roadmap to help companies such as BPCL, drive a true 360-degree view of customers,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson & CEO, Salesforce India.  

The Indian oil and gas industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 2.64% according to information from market intelligence firm Mordor Intelligence. 

In terms of digital transformation, an August 2021 blog post by Ernst and Young asks some key questions for players in the oil and gas sector. Which tools will drive value creation? How can oil & gas companies keep up with innovation? And how can they approach technology to keep ahead of the competition? E&Y suggested that these companies need to incorporate intelligent automation, AI-based decisions, Industrial IoT and blockchain to stay competitive.  

According to a Mordor Intelligence report, the digital transformation market for the global oil & gas industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10% between the period of 2021 to 2026.