The global oil and gas industry is valued at roughly $5 trillion. As a leader in this field, you carry a lot of weight on your shoulders and can benefit from any solution that saves you time and effort while increasing savings and returns on investments.
Investing in the correct oil and gas procurement platform is one of the most effective ways to experience all of these benefits (and more).
In this blog, you’ll learn more about the benefits oil and gas procurement platforms like BidOut can offer, especially to professionals in the oil and gas industry. You’ll also discover best practices for maximizing the results from your procurement platform and advice on overcoming challenges related to adopting this new technology.
Streamlining Procurement Processes: A Look at Time Savings
One of the greatest advantages of using an oil and gas procurement platform is that it can provide you and your team with significant time savings.
Here are some examples of how you can streamline processes and save time with the right procurement solutions:
Increased Accuracy
Fewer mistakes mean less time spent doubling back and correcting past work. Procurement solutions can streamline your processes and help you move through day-to-day tasks more quickly by increasing accuracy the first time around.
Faster Document Processing
How much time do you and your staff spend collecting, reviewing, and organizing documents — not to mention the time spent trying to find those documents later, after they’ve been filed?
By centralizing everything in one location, procurement platforms make it easier for you to process and retrieve documents in the future.
Reduced Repetition
Procurement tools can help you automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks and eliminate some altogether. For example, instead of creating bids from scratch every time, solutions like BidOut provide convenient templates to give you a head start and ensure you don’t forget any important details along the way.
Reducing Administrative Burden: How Procurement Platforms Save Effort
Procurement platforms allow you to work more efficiently and help you work smarter rather than harder.
No tool will do all the heavy lifting for you, but an oil and gas procurement platform can save you a lot of effort and free you up to dedicate more energy to other parts of your job.
Check out these examples of how procurement platforms can save effort:
Easier Bid Creation
With the help of templates and the option to choose from existing service providers, BidOut simplifies the bid creation process and helps you get them made and sent to the appropriate recipient sooner.
Enhanced Communication
Procurement platforms like BidOut centralize all communication features and allow you to stay connected through the platform. Rather than juggling texts, emails, and other standard communication methods, you can use one tool to handle all messaging, saving you ample time and labor.
Increased Visibility
When everything is easily accessible and visible, you can avoid wasting time and effort to sift through files and find the necessary documents. A procurement tool centralizes your documents, communications, and other vital resources, making them more visible and helping you find what you’re looking for sooner.
Simpler Comparisons
Comparison is critical when dealing with service providers — especially in an industry as expansive as the oil and gas industry. Failure to compare bids and services could result in unnecessary spending and negatively impact your bottom line.
Luckily, BidOut allows for more straightforward comparisons and helps you award bids more efficiently.
Case Studies: Real-World Examples of Time and Effort Savings
Many companies in the oil and gas industry do not get multiple bids from service providers, partly because of the time it takes to collect and compare those bids. Failure to collect bids can lead to significant overpayment.
With the help of tools like BidOut’s 3 Bids & a Buy feature, it’s easy to gather and compare bids to ensure you’re getting a fair price.
This tool collects pricing details verbally and through emails without a time-consuming RFP process. It provides a complete record of the process and includes customizable approval workflows, which allow team members to approve expenses before implementing a job.
BidOut’s clients have saved 18% by utilizing BidOut’s procurement platform and collecting/comparing bids before making final decisions.
ROI in Focus: Measuring Productivity Gains with Procurement Platforms
Every director (or anyone else in a leadership role) wants to save money while increasing the return they see on their investments. Investing in a procurement tool can save time (and we all know time is money) and help you avoid overspending, which can lead to more returns in the long run.
As a business professional, you know that time is money. When you eliminate inefficient manual processes, improve document storage and retrieval, and increase visibility to identify weak spots in your workflows, you save time and increase your overall savings.
By completing tasks more efficiently and accurately, you can get more done sooner and improve your ROI overall.
Leveraging Data Insights: A Competitive Advantage in Procurement
To say the oil and gas industry is competitive would be an understatement. Fortunately, the right procurement solutions (appropriately used) can provide you with a substantial advantage over your competitors.
One of the top benefits of procurement solutions like BidOut is that they provide you with more data, which can help you better understand your position in the market and identify areas in which you can improve.
The Role of Collaboration and Transparency in Oil and Gas Procurement
It takes a lot of moving parts to keep your business running smoothly. Suppose team members cannot easily connect with each other and find answers to questions or access the most recent reports and insurance documents. In that case, there’s more room for mistakes (which interfere with your productivity and can be expensive to rectify).
Procurement solutions like BidOut allow for maximum transparency and easier collaboration between employees.
BidOut saves team members and service providers from constant texts, phone calls, emails, and faxes. Instead, it lets them communicate directly from the BidOut platform and maintain a detailed history of all communications, creating a paper trail that could come in handy in the future in the event of any misunderstandings.
Challenges and Considerations in Implementing Procurement Platforms
As is the case when adopting any new technology, there will always be some growing pains when you adopt a new procurement platform.
Here are some of the most frequently cited challenges and concerns associated with implementing a procurement platform, with advice on how to overcome them:
Choosing the Best Tool
To see all the benefits shared above, you must choose the right procurement platform for your and your team’s needs. Look for a solution that offers features that will solve your biggest pain points and provides a range of pricing tiers so you can avoid spending more than is necessary.
Managing Resistance to Change
It’s natural for your team members (and maybe even you, to an extent) to be wary of adopting a new tool. They may have grown used to the current way of doing things and be hesitant about changing things up.
Be sure to communicate the benefits the new procurement platform will provide. Involve team members in the selection process when possible, too, so they feel like they get a say in the tools they’ll use every day.
Integrating with Existing Solutions
If you already use certain tools and technologies to run your business, you might worry about how a procurement platform will integrate with them. When choosing a tool, look for providers that will give you a free demo and help you see how the tool will work and how it will connect with your existing solutions.
Best Practices for Maximizing Productivity with Procurement Solutions
If you want to set your team up for greater success when adopting an oil and gas procurement solution, be sure to keep these best practices in mind:
Review Your Current Strategy
Start by evaluating your current setup and the tools you use (if any) during the procurement process. Then, identify and document gaps that might be slowing you down, taking more time and effort than they should, and eating into your ROI.
Create an Implementation Plan and Establish KPIs
Once you’ve chosen a tool, take the time to develop an implementation plan to help team members get used to the new tool and adapt to changes in processes.
It helps to establish key performance indicators, too, so you can measure progress and ensure the tool is genuinely helping your business achieve its short- and long-term goals.
Provide Sufficient Training
Finally, allow sufficient time for team members to learn how to navigate the new platform and incorporate it into their workflows. Make sure they have access to training documents and other resources as well so they can find answers to their questions and won’t feel that they’ve been left to figure things out as they go.
Conclusion: Harnessing the Full Potential of Procurement Platforms in Oil and Gas
Oil and gas procurement platforms have the potential to save your business time and effort while also improving communication, providing robust data and analytics, and increasing your return on investment.
Are you ready to see all the advantages BidOut can provide for you and your team? If so, get in touch and schedule a demo today!
