Refining on-site processes: how EET Fuels, formerly Essar Oil UK, took a refinery off paper

Shay O'Connor00:02

Hello everybody, and welcome to our webinar today, Refining On-Site Processes. We have Robert McNair from Essar Oil with us. Robert is the documentation, data and engineering IT manager at Essar Oil, he has years of experience in this industry, and we're delighted that he agreed to give us his first-hand insights into how FlowForma and process automation have helped his company.

Shay O'Connor00:58

Some housekeeping: we're recording the webinar, and if you need assistance, email info@flowforma.com. Your lines are muted, but you can type questions in the chat box. There are a lot of people on today, so we'll get to as many as we can, and answer the rest by reply afterward. We'll share the recording with everybody, and we'd ask you to complete our feedback form. So, without further ado, on to Robert and our case study spotlight.

Shay O'Connor02:13

Robert, I'm going to fire a few questions in your direction. To give people some background, can you tell us a little about Essar Oil and your role?

Robert McNair02:37

Certainly, Shay. My background is in engineering over the past 30 to 40 years, specifically as an instrumentation engineer, but in the mid-1990s I moved into SAP and IT projects around refinery projects, engineering and operations. Essar Oil, a company based in Mumbai, bought the refinery where I work, Stanlow refinery in the UK, from Shell UK in 2011. It's the second biggest refinery in the UK and supplies around 16% of the UK's road fuel. We have 800 employees here, about 500 contract staff, and probably around 5,000 people in local industries that we support.

Shay O'Connor03:39

You're the manager of the Essar documentation, data and engineering IT team, so presumably you have a lot of responsibility there.

Robert McNair03:52

Yes. We look after predominantly engineering and projects documentation for the refinery, for maintenance and operations. Essentially, we make sure the people working in the field have the right information to do their jobs properly. If they're working with incorrect data, whether it's maintenance, projects or operating the plants, it can cause issues, so there's quite a lot of responsibility on my team.

Shay O'Connor04:23

That brings me to my next question: what challenges were you facing before you decided you needed to automate your processes?

Robert McNair04:36

Stanlow is a large site that dates to before the war, and a lot of the processes on the site are paper-based. One of the main challenges was that the paperwork, documents and data that weren't in official projects or engineering IT systems were sitting on servers or people's hard drives, and weren't very structured. We decided to address that using SharePoint 2013 as a document management system for non-engineering, non-projects data and documents.

Robert McNair05:18

When we started to implement SharePoint, we had a very expensive consultant doing the work, and along the way that consultant was building some forms and workflows for us at a very great expense. We suddenly realized it was going to be an expensive and lengthy journey, because it was time-consuming as well. That led us to look for something we could use to build those workflows and forms ourselves.

Shay O'Connor05:50

With all your locations, and a company taking over other sites, data retrieval is probably a headache. Do you need to gather that data as fast as possible?

Robert McNair06:13

You're absolutely right, Shay. We had a lot of issues with paper-based processes: a lack of transparency and governance. We've been audited quite a few times, and those audits picked up gaps in our business processes. Information used to get lost going around the site, and it's a huge site. We had a lot of problems we needed to address.

Shay O'Connor06:44

Was it a goal within Essar to become self-sufficient, so you were in charge of creating and maintaining your own processes?

Robert McNair07:02

Absolutely. It became quite clear after a while, especially with an expensive resource taking a long time on some of these processes, that we wanted more control. We looked at what was available to let us generate our own forms and workflows in SharePoint. The Essar procurement process commits us to looking at at least three vendors, so we had them on site for demonstrations, narrowed them down, and ultimately chose FlowForma.

Shay O'Connor07:48

We take no-code for granted now, but before you saw FlowForma, did you realize there were no-code options in the marketplace?

Robert McNair08:06

The honest answer is no, not until we started to look. We narrowed it down to three vendors that we thought would fulfill our criteria, which was specifically something that end users who weren't IT programmers could use to develop forms and workflows: a no-code option. Ultimately that led us to your tool, from an ease-of-use perspective, and it was cost-effective compared with the others as well.

Shay O'Connor08:42

So you went to the marketplace, checked out three vendors and selected FlowForma. Then you had to implement it. How did you find implementing the processes, and what challenges did you meet?

Robert McNair09:24

It went very well. I think we gave you a bit of a hard time: we brought Paul from your team back on site and set him a blind challenge to build a process we'd already built with our developer. He built it in half an hour. Our developer had taken two weeks on site to do it the traditional way, so we were very pleased.

Robert McNair09:54

Once we settled on FlowForma, we used your SureStart onboarding program. We wanted to use the tool in all areas of the business, not just operations, maintenance and projects, but marketing, retail, finance and procurement: anywhere they used paper forms and had inefficiencies. We selected 12 key business people, none of them from an IT background, basically business analysts in those areas, and trained them with your trainer. That's worked very well: even with a big shutdown that took us out of action for three or four months, we have about 30 flows built so far, and quite a few hundred more to do.

Shay O'Connor10:42

I'm going to put you on the spot: did you create any of those flows yourself?

Robert McNair10:50

Yes, I did. I couldn't sell it to the site and do the change management without understanding how the tool worked and using it myself. I sat down after the training, and it's very intuitive. It can be very complex in some areas, but starting with the simple forms, I've built around a dozen myself, and a few of those are in use already.

Shay O'Connor11:39

We find clients often start with a quick win to engage the rest of the business. Did you focus on one process to get buy-in?

Robert McNair11:56

Yes, it's always good to have a quick win that demonstrates the functionality. We were lucky: some young engineers had an issue with work requests that go around the site, which we're legally obliged to retain, and quite a number of those paper documents were lost on a site of about 2,000 acres. They wanted us to solve the problem, we had the tool, and we very quickly built the form and workflow for them. We only did it before Christmas, and around 3,000 forms have already gone through that digitized process.

Shay O'Connor12:45

Beyond the time saved, something that can be overlooked is data integrity: you don't have to transcribe information from forms into a database or spreadsheets, and you get pre-validated information. Has that had a big impact?

Robert McNair13:30

Absolutely, and it was part of the natural evolution. Once we started to digitize the forms and workflows in SharePoint, you've got lists associated with them, and the business quickly saw it could extract data. We've started to use some apps for charting, so we can look at process improvement, see where the blockages and delays in a process are, and get stats on how well those processes are doing.

Shay O'Connor14:06

If you could group the benefits that FlowForma and process automation have brought Essar Oil, what would they be?

Robert McNair14:32

The most beneficial element is the speed those processes now go through. Imagine moving paper around a big site and getting signatures on documents: very cumbersome and time-consuming. I've said five times faster, but in a lot of cases it's far faster than that. And we have traceability on those processes, with visualization charts for continuous improvement. It's all part of a wider digital transformation journey the company is on.

Robert McNair15:03

I should also mention we haven't let the analysts loose around the site generating forms left, right and center. We have a centralized development area where they develop the flows, then move them into the production areas of SharePoint. A team of several people, including me, vets those processes, so they're prioritized: we pick the ones with the biggest benefits first and work through them, and we catch paper processes that are no longer valid and can be dropped.

Shay O'Connor15:45

Is this just a starting point? Do you see integration with other systems, or anything else, in the future?

Robert McNair16:17

Absolutely. It's the start of a journey for the company, and FlowForma and SharePoint are two elements of a bigger picture, but it's been a great enabler for our old paper-based processes, and the site has taken to it very well. We've just been through a big shutdown, the four-yearly maintenance cycle, for about three months, so next week we'll pick up more of the wider digital transformation.

Shay O'Connor16:52

In your industry, the next step is often predictive analysis. Would you be looking in that direction?

Robert McNair17:11

Absolutely. We don't just look at historical trends. Especially in the maintenance and operation of plants, we're now looking at predicting how we'd run some of these processes using historical information. I don't want to go into too much detail, but some of what we're doing is cutting-edge in the industry. It's part of our continuous improvement journey: we have a team looking at all areas of continuous improvement, I sit on it, and IT is a big element of it.

Robert McNair18:15

Process automation is integral to the business, and we'll be doing more of it over the coming months and years. I find it astounding that we only started this journey around the middle of last year, and it's cascaded immensely throughout the refinery. Start with the quick wins and the easier processes; we're working our way through to more complex management of change processes. You need to engage with the people, get them involved and have those quick wins if you really want success.

Shay O'Connor19:17

You've basically answered my final question already, but why did you choose FlowForma?

Robert McNair20:00

It was one of the nice projects. Our procurement process says we look at at least three vendors, and ideally you want something cost-effective, but our primary objective was something easy to use for non-IT people, because we didn't want to keep employing expensive SharePoint programmers. Cost-effectiveness was the win compared with your competitors, and the surprise was that no coding was needed. We thought we might need a little support from an IT programmer, but unless you're doing extremely complex processes, you don't need an IT background to use your tool. It's very intuitive.

Shay O'Connor20:52

Thank you for answering my questions, Robert. I'll ask you to hang on in case questions come in for you.

Shay O'Connor21:14

For anyone who doesn't know much about FlowForma, a big differentiator is that it's a three-in-one toolkit: forms, workflow and document generation all in one place, so you don't have to couple workflows with forms. And because it's no-code, everything gets done faster. You can use your Office 365 investment, or work on Azure, and be up and running very quickly. We don't store any of your data; it all sits in your tenancy, so you're in full control of it.

Shay O'Connor22:49

Because all the forms are rendered in HTML5, they're mobile accessible automatically, so you don't have to build apps. Our app lets you work online and offline, and picks up geolocation. You design the processes yourselves, with no code, in the way you want to see them. There's an SDK to extend the product if you wish, but 92% of our clients have never written a piece of code. We have a lot of experience in oil and gas and construction, where clients need mobile access, online and offline, and regulatory compliance, and because they've built everything themselves they can be confident they're compliant.

Shay O'Connor24:46

This is our default landing page for the trial environment, with some of our template processes. When you create a process, it ends up as a URL, so you can distribute it any way you like: an icon on your desktop, a link on your intranet, and it's rendered automatically for mobile. Let's start with a simple safety observation, for people who come across something that needs reporting from a safety point of view.

Shay O'Connor26:02

At the top is the header, with repeating, non-sensitive information like dates, times, users and descriptions, then the step bar. Each step has questions, and the most powerful part of the product is that forms are dynamic: without code, the screen changes with your selections. On mobile, it asks whether you want to take a photograph. I'll record a corrective observation, an unsafe condition, a bolt missing from the stairs, and my intervention: masking tape, because I'm not very good at DIY.

Shay O'Connor27:41

When I say a follow-up action is required, a new step pops in, and I state the action: get the bolts secured and notify health and safety. It has picked up automatically that my manager, and the follow-up action, is me. Here's the wet signature capability, perfect for mobile, where you sign with your finger or a stylus on any touchscreen.

Shay O'Connor28:56

Now I'm the next person, completing the follow-up action. Document generation is part of the three-in-one toolkit, with no limit on how many documents you create. The safety observation report has been created with the information gathered in the process and my signature. It can be stored in SharePoint, emailed or attached to the steps, so from a regulatory point of view you create all the documentation you need automatically.

Shay O'Connor29:55

Another way of validating who submitted a step is in this incident process, which has four steps. Required fields have a red asterisk, and each question can have help, from a simple tooltip to a detailed guide with links to other documents. I pick the person it relates to from my employee list, and the data is pulled in automatically, so you have data integration built in.

Shay O'Connor31:47

When I submit, I'm asked for my credentials again: that's the e-signature capability, which you switch on or off. If I enter the wrong password, it tells me. I'm on Office 365, so it validates my Office 365 credentials. Everything is audited in the background, so from a regulatory point of view we can stand over the fact that Shay O'Connor signed off that step.

Shay O'Connor33:00

If I go back to the process and open the audit facility for this incident, it shows every step that happened, every rule executed and every signature checked and validated. That's a pure requirement from a regulatory and compliance point of view: you have the process to show, and the audit log.

Shay O'Connor33:54

Now the background. This is the flow designer, where the workflow and forms are created in one place, along with document generation. On the left are the steps in the process, and within each step its questions, or fields. You can work manually, or in the visual flow designer, which is fully linked.

Shay O'Connor35:17

For each step you then apply rules, and the rules available change depending on where you are, because we follow a lean approach: you only see what you need. There's workflow control, for who sees what and who gets assigned steps, all no-code. Data integration is probably the most powerful area: you can execute SQL stored procedures on the fly, pull in data from SharePoint, update lists, add records and talk to other FlowForma processes. And there are communications and permissions.

Shay O'Connor36:54

Let's add a webinar step and move it up. I add a username question: every SharePoint question type is available, plus extras like lookups to lists and SQL Server tables, the wet signature, and get location, which captures the coordinates of where the person is during that step. I make it a person field that picks up the current user, then a required yes or no question, 'Proceed?', with a tooltip, and a multiple-line text field, 'Explain'.

Shay O'Connor39:31

I make 'Explain' invisible and the username disabled, then add a simple rule. Every rule works the same way: a description, conditions for when it kicks off, and actions. If 'Proceed' equals no, show 'Explain'. That's how you make screens so dynamic: simple rules that hide and show information. Running the process again, it's now a five-step process: the username is picked up automatically, and if I say no, the explain field appears. No programming; our training simply shows you where the rules are.

Shay O'Connor42:15

Each step is a task. In the work items area, if you have an SLA around your processes, say an incident investigation that must be done within a certain time, you can reassign the work item or send an alert after a set number of days or hours, or on a date captured in the process. It can go to a group, a person named in a question, or someone already assigned to another step.

Shay O'Connor43:48

All the data about how steps are proceeding is gathered together, so you can see how your SLAs are looking across everything in operation. Historical flow analysis looks at completed and in-progress processes to find bottlenecks: for site surveys, I can see the second step, the compliance check, is very slow. You can see which steps are delayed and who they're assigned to. That's a brief view of FlowForma; there's a lot more I'd like to show, but I don't want you falling asleep at your keyboards.

Shay O'Connor45:44

Robert, a question for you: did Essar Oil have broken and fractured processes, and did you fix those first, or did you use SureStart to fix them?

Robert McNair46:17

Yes, we did come across broken processes, and we didn't purely use SureStart to fix them, although it was discussed during the training. It's always best to sort your process out before you digitize it. A lot of our business processes weren't mapped out, so we used a simple swimlane diagram to map them, looked for the areas causing pain, and sorted out the process before we digitized it. It's less difficult with internal customers, but broken processes with external customers will give you real grief. So my coaching would be: sort your processes out before you digitize them, if you can.

Shay O'Connor47:31

Another one: what did you need in place to get FlowForma up and running? Did you need any other technologies?

Robert McNair47:44

We already had SharePoint 2013. Without going into the technical details, an IT colleague who looks after our SharePoint infrastructure implemented the FlowForma application in the SharePoint environment, and it was as simple as that. We put a test site together so we could build flows offline, and once they were approved and tested, they were migrated into the production SharePoint environment.

Shay O'Connor48:33

People are directing all the questions at you, Robert. What's the shortest and longest build, and how long does a process take to build?

Robert McNair48:47

Simple processes, like raising a safety issue while walking on the refinery or raising a maintenance request, I can confidently build within an hour, then refine. If you work on a refinery you'll know plant change, or management of change, which is essentially small projects. Ours is extremely lengthy; we had support from one of your team, and it took about a week to build. Even so, compared with going other routes, it's been extremely cost-effective, and we'll trial it on site when our turnaround finishes next week.

Shay O'Connor49:48

When people look at the ROI of new technology, did you consider the potential savings on professional services?

Robert McNair50:15

Absolutely. It has to be in this day and age; cost always figures into these things.

Shay O'Connor50:51

Who's the best person in the organization to deploy a process, and do they need training?

Robert McNair51:07

It could be anyone in the business, depending on how simple or complex the process is. You don't need to be a really techie business analyst for some of the simpler ones, like bringing a visitor onto site: identifying who's coming, which company, where they're going and who they're visiting. Some of the finance and procurement processes are more complex, and you'd need someone close to the business process itself to build them.

Shay O'Connor52:35

Can you capture location details, maybe on a map? We have a default question type called get location, which pulls in the longitude and latitude of exactly where you are, and those can be applied to a map. Location, wet signature and mobile are a big focus on our roadmap, because more and more clients use mobile devices online and offline.

Shay O'Connor53:58

Robert, someone says they spent months on a previous solution that now lies unused. What has user adoption been like, and does Essar Oil manage all its own processes?

Robert McNair54:24

When we rolled out the tool, user adoption was very good. At the start of this year we went into a refinery shutdown, and we're coming out of that next week, so we'll have to re-engage some areas of the business that have been away from the IT tools for a while. But because it's so simple to use, adoption has gone well; if it had been very complex, it might have switched people off. And yes, most of our processes are managed in-house.

Shay O'Connor55:12

One more: how long does it take to get up and running from a training point of view? There's a two-day training course, with 12 hours of tutorials available to get to advanced level. Robert, how did you find the training?

Robert McNair55:48

We took the two-day option. There's a lot in that training, and it goes into some of the more complex areas of FlowForma. When you get back and start with the simple forms, you understand how easy it is and pick it up quickly. But it's good to do the two-day training, otherwise you won't know what's available in the tool and how to exploit it.

Shay O'Connor56:36

Thank you to everybody for attending, and Robert, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences; first-hand experience like this is invaluable. Anyone who wants to try FlowForma can start a free trial, or book a demo and we'll put together a proof of concept with one of your own processes. Please fill out the survey at the end. Thanks again, Robert.

Robert McNair57:52

Thank you, Shay. It's been a pleasure.