During COVID-19, many enterprises faced a critical juncture: innovate or face obsolescence. For global downstream oil and gas retailer Puma Energy, the latter was not an option.
Operating across 9,000 retail sites and over 100 airports in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa, Puma Energy urgently needed to pivot its operations. The global downturn in aviation and retail, exacerbated by the pandemic’s restrictions, necessitated a rapid shift in strategy.
This was when the company turned to Kissflow’s low-code solution to eliminate bottlenecks and simplify processes amid limited manpower and mobility.
“The need for digital collaboration or orchestration became apparent as businesses went remote. What helped the teams at Puma was that Kissflow was an easy and simple-to-use low-code platform that could scale quickly,” noted Tanay Tiwary, Global Head of Digitisation & Business Improvement, Puma Energy.
Shifting gears
Before deploying the solution, Kissflow studied Puma Energy’s business strategy and operations. To facilitate a smoother transition, a pilot program was initiated with 200 users, and the Kissflow apps were configured to meet Puma Energy’s specific requirements.
With Puma Energy heavily reliant on paper-based processes, it was clear that replacing them with digital solutions was urgently needed.
“To reduce the time around manual entry, we used features like our smart attachments and optical character recognition. This saved a lot of time for both parties. We then mapped the data and created over 40 processes to streamline Puma’s everyday operations, especially supplier management,” recalled Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow.
Following deployment, Puma Energy was able to digitise, automate, and improve the efficiency of many core operations, including fuel onboarding, aeroplane refuelling requests, agreement management, accounts payable, as well as capital and operational expenditures.
“Kissflow helped break the distance barrier that often caused delays in decision-making. As a result, Puma Energy was able to make decisions quickly, with all relevant information easily accessible to the leaders managing Puma’s various offices, which improved overall efficiency,” Tiwary observed.
Apart from digitising paper processes, Puma Energy also benefited in the following areas:
- Enhanced collaboration across the organisation.
- Efficient time management.
- Change management.
“Through this partnership with Kissflow, Puma has been able to set up necessary, streamlined processes, as well as measure tasks and address issues right away,” Tiwary continued.
No looking back
After implementing Kissflow, Puma Energy began identifying additional areas that could be transformed and informed using low-code technology.
One such area is supplier management, where transactions that were previously conducted via email are now managed through a supplier portal. This portal enables suppliers to quickly access essential information, such as purchase orders, invoices, and payment statuses.
“We still see that we are not going back to the paper way of working. We like this new approach, and we continue to double down on it. I think that’s what we will see for most organisations: they will use platforms like Kissflow for specific needs, and before they realise it, it’s addressing many other needs that weren’t initially the target,” Tiwary remarked.
Specifically, Kissflow’s low-code solution enabled Puma Energy to:
- Empower business users to identify and solve problems under IT’s governance but without depending on them.
- Automate and improve efficiency for 40 key processes.
- Enabled Finance and Operations teams to add more value by analysing data and identifying areas of improvement, rather than manually entering information.
- Scale from 200 users to 1,500 within a year.
“Our core mission at Puma is to provide a better experience for our customers so all our technology investments are centred around making this process better. Any tool that eases our work will be on our radar,” Tiwary emphasised.
Innovative approach
For the rest of 2024 and beyond, Kissflow predicts that low-code/no-code platforms will continue to dominate companies’ IT stack.
“Oil and gas companies are always looking for digital solutions to address the challenges they face. What started as a need during COVID-19 has now become essential for business operations. There is also a spike in the use of AI, RPA, and VR in the oil and gas industry. Companies that are quick to adopt these technologies will be the leaders in the industry moving forward,” Sambandam said.
Internally, Kissflow is betting on generative AI to further reduce the semantic gap in creating applications.
“We will be using AI not as a superficial construct that stitches together UX inadequacies of the current platform but as a core capability of our business object, process, and state engines. This will enable the development of a new wave of apps that cannot be achieved by citizen developers currently due to the inherent semantic gap,” Sambandam added.
This vision, the Kissflow CEO noted, is rooted in the desire to strengthen the capabilities of its low-code platform without sacrificing simplicity, which is crucial for citizen development.
As for Puma Energy, driving further operational efficiency is a top priority.
“Safety is key for us, and so is operational excellence. Both go hand in hand. Where Kissflow is now helping us is in focusing on this area, which in most companies has remained on paper, such as permits to work and various operational checks and balances that need to be in place before approving something for execution,” Tiwary concluded.
