The oil and gas industry is navigating unprecedented challenges from price volatility and operational risks to sustainability pressures and the global energy transition. Digital transformation is no longer optional; it is the foundation for efficiency, safety and long-term growth.
RISE with SAP provides a comprehensive business transformation-as-a-service framework, enabling oil and gas companies to modernize operations, embrace the cloud and leverage technologies like IoT, AI and analytics. Importantly, it supports all domains of oil and gas upstream, midstream, downstream and trading ensuring transformation happens across the value chain.
Here are ten ways RISE with SAP drives transformation in oil and gas, with real-world use cases across industry domains:
1. Cloud-Enabled Agility
Oil and gas enterprises operate in one of the most volatile industries in the world. Market prices swing rapidly, global operations span remote geographies and geopolitical or environmental disruptions can shift business priorities overnight. To thrive in this environment, companies need agility, scalability and resilience which RISE with SAP delivers by moving core ERP workloads to the cloud.
The benefits extend across the value chain:
- Upstream: Scaling seismic data processing and advanced exploration applications without relying on costly on-premises infrastructure. Exploration teams gain faster access to insights while reducing IT overhead.
- Midstream: Centralized pipeline and logistics management across geographies, enabling consistent monitoring of throughput, scheduling and compliance from one integrated hub.
- Downstream: Real-time retail analytics at fuel stations and distribution hubs, empowering enterprises to optimize pricing, promotions and supply allocation on the fly.
Cloud agility doesn’t just modernize IT, it ensures business leaders can pivot quickly, expand globally and respond to demand fluctuations without being constrained by legacy systems.
This cloud-first foundation paves the way for integrated supply chain visibility, ensuring transparency and coordination across upstream, midstream and downstream operations.
2. Integrated Supply Chain Visibility
Oil and gas supply chains are among the most complex in the world spanning remote exploration rigs, sprawling pipeline networks, massive shipping fleets and thousands of downstream retail outlets. Any lack of visibility can lead to costly delays, safety risks, or imbalances between supply and demand. RISE with SAP, powered by SAP S/4HANA, provides enterprises with the ability to see, plan and manage the entire value chain in real time.
Here’s how it supports each domain:
- Upstream: Coordinating drilling supplies, spare parts and offshore logistics, ensuring rigs and platforms operate without costly interruptions.
- Midstream: Optimizing pipeline capacity utilization, tanker scheduling and terminal storage management to avoid bottlenecks and reduce transportation costs.
- Downstream: Aligning refinery production with trading contracts and retail distribution, ensuring fuel availability and pricing are optimized across markets.
With centralized data and real-time insights, enterprises can anticipate disruptions, rebalance supply and demand quickly and maintain compliance across global operations. This doesn’t just improve efficiency it transforms the supply chain into a strategic lever for resilience and competitiveness.
Of course, even the most connected supply chain relies on one critical factor: asset reliability. That’s why enterprises turn to IoT-powered predictive maintenance to ensure pipelines, rigs and refineries run without unplanned downtime.
3. Predictive Maintenance with IoT
In an industry where a single equipment failure can cost millions and put lives or the environment at risk, unplanned downtime is not an option. Traditional reactive maintenance models wait until assets fail, while preventive maintenance often leads to over-servicing and higher costs. RISE with SAP integrates IoT sensors, analytics and machine learning to shift enterprises toward predictive maintenance fixing issues before they disrupt operations.
Domain-specific applications include:
- Upstream: Continuous monitoring of drilling rigs, offshore platforms and pumps for early anomaly detection, reducing the risk of blowouts or production halts.
- Midstream: Real-time detection of pipeline corrosion, leaks and compressor station malfunctions, ensuring safer and more reliable transport.
- Downstream: Predictive alerts for refinery turbines, boilers and other critical assets, preventing costly shutdowns and improving process safety.
By embedding IoT-driven intelligence into asset management, oil and gas companies can extend equipment life, reduce maintenance costs and improve worker safety. Most importantly, predictive insights help enterprises transition from firefighting to foresight, turning reliability into a competitive advantage.
With assets stabilized and downtime reduced, the next logical step is to focus on operational efficiency and cost control, ensuring enterprises maximize the value of every barrel, every mile and every customer interaction.
4. Operational Efficiency & Cost Control
In an industry where margins are constantly under pressure, oil and gas enterprises must squeeze maximum value from every barrel extracted, transported, or refined. RISE with SAP enhances operational efficiency through automation, standardization and data-driven insights, reducing unnecessary costs while maintaining safety and performance standards.
Here’s how it plays out across the value chain:
- Upstream: Automating exploration workflows, production reporting and well data management, so engineers can spend less time on paperwork and more time improving productivity.
- Midstream: Reducing transportation costs by optimizing routing, improving asset utilization of pipelines and tankers and cutting energy consumption across compressor stations.
- Downstream: Streamlining refinery operations with integrated production planning, blending optimization and better coordination between refinery output and retail demand.
The outcome is leaner operations, faster decision-making and more consistent compliance with industry standards all while controlling operational expenses. For oil and gas leaders, this means they can reinvest savings into innovation and sustainability initiatives without compromising profitability.
Efficiency gains provide a strong operational baseline, but true competitive advantage comes when companies combine this with advanced analytics and forecasting enabling smarter, predictive decisions at every stage of the value chain. Here’s how we do it for our oil and gas industry clients.
5. Advanced Analytics for Better Decisions
Data is one of the most valuable resources in oil and gas yet without the right tools, much of it remains underutilized. From seismic data to pipeline sensor feeds and downstream retail sales, enterprises generate terabytes of information daily. RISE with SAP, powered by embedded analytics and SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP), transforms raw data into actionable intelligence, enabling leaders to make faster and more informed decisions.
Use cases across the value chain include:
- Upstream: Real-time production forecasting based on drilling progress, reservoir performance and wellhead data, helping operators optimize resource allocation and anticipate yield.
- Midstream: Pipeline throughput analytics that balance regional supply and demand, ensuring safe capacity utilization while reducing bottlenecks.
- Downstream: Refinery margin optimization through better visibility into crude sourcing, process yields and energy costs coupled with retail demand forecasting to align supply with consumer behavior.
With advanced analytics, oil and gas leaders gain predictive insights that help them stay ahead of price volatility, manage risks more effectively and respond to market dynamics with confidence.
Beyond operational and financial benefits, these same analytics capabilities support sustainability and ESG compliance, enabling enterprises to measure, monitor and report on environmental performance in real time.
6. Sustainability & ESG Compliance
For oil and gas enterprises, sustainability has moved from a “good-to-have” to a board-level priority. Regulators, investors and customers now demand transparent reporting on carbon emissions, water usage and energy efficiency. At the same time, companies must reduce flaring, minimize environmental risks and prepare for the global energy transition. RISE with SAP embeds sustainability into daily operations, allowing enterprises to monitor, manage and report on ESG performance in real time.
Domain-specific applications include:
- Upstream: Tracking flaring, methane leaks and emissions during drilling and production, ensuring compliance with environmental standards and community expectations.
- Midstream: Monitoring energy usage and carbon intensity in pipeline operations, tankers and terminals to reduce transportation-related emissions.
- Downstream: Measuring refinery emissions, monitoring product carbon intensity and managing sustainability metrics across retail fuel stations.
By connecting operational data with ESG dashboards, enterprises can not only comply with regulations but also demonstrate measurable progress toward decarbonization goals. This shifts sustainability from a reporting exercise into a competitive differentiator that builds investor confidence and stakeholder trust.
These initiatives become even more effective when combined with digital twins and simulation models, which allow oil and gas companies to test sustainability strategies and optimize operations in a safe, data-driven environment.
7. Digital Twins for Safer Operations
Safety, reliability and efficiency are the cornerstones of oil and gas operations. Yet testing changes in real-world environments whether on an offshore platform, a cross-country pipeline, or inside a refinery carries significant risk and cost. Digital twins, enabled through RISE with SAP and integrated IoT data, provide a virtual replica of physical assets, allowing enterprises to simulate, analyze and optimize before making real-world changes.
Key applications across the value chain include:
- Upstream: Creating digital replicas of offshore rigs and drilling sites to model drilling risks, test equipment configurations and improve safety protocols without interrupting production.
- Midstream: Simulating pipeline flows to enhance integrity management, predict pressure build-ups and design effective emergency response scenarios for leak or rupture events.
- Downstream: Using refinery digital twins to experiment with process improvements, energy efficiency measures, or new product blends before committing to costly physical changes.
By reducing the risks of trial-and-error and offering predictive insights into asset behavior, digital twins help oil and gas companies boost safety, extend asset life and minimize downtime. They also support sustainability initiatives by enabling low-emission process designs and efficiency improvements.
Once assets and safety are optimized with digital simulations, the next phase of transformation is empowering the workforce ensuring people have the tools, skills and insights to operate effectively in this new digital-first environment.
8. Workforce Transformation
People remain the most valuable asset in oil and gas from geoscientists and drilling engineers to pipeline operators, refinery staff and retail station managers. But managing such a diverse and distributed workforce is complex, especially when operations stretch across continents and involve contractors, suppliers and regulators. RISE with SAP integrates with SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass to modernize workforce management, ensuring the right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time.
Examples across the value chain include:
- Upstream: Training and certifying field engineers with SAP SuccessFactors, ensuring compliance with safety standards and providing career development paths for high-skill talent in exploration and drilling.
- Midstream: Managing contract labor, logistics coordination and vendor relationships with SAP Fieldglass, which is critical for pipeline construction, inspection and maintenance projects.
- Downstream: Automating scheduling, compliance tracking and performance management for refinery workers and fuel retail staff, ensuring safe, efficient and customer-ready operations.
By digitizing workforce management, enterprises can reduce administrative overhead, close skill gaps faster and maintain compliance across all levels of the value chain. Most importantly, a digitally empowered workforce is safer, more productive and better prepared to deliver innovation.
With a strong workforce foundation in place, enterprises can extend their transformation outward strengthening customer and partner engagement to build trust, loyalty and transparency across the value chain.
9. Improved Customer & Partner Engagement
Oil and gas enterprises don’t operate in isolation; they rely on a vast ecosystem of joint venture partners, regulators, suppliers, distributors and end customers. Building trust and transparency across this ecosystem is critical to both operational efficiency and long-term growth. SAP Customer Experience (CX) solutions within RISE with SAP enable enterprises to deliver personalized, transparent and reliable engagement across the value chain.
Applications by domain include:
- Upstream: Transparent reporting for joint ventures and regulatory stakeholders, ensuring compliance with exploration contracts, safety standards and government regulations.
- Midstream: Enhanced contract visibility and settlement transparency for transport partners, traders and logistics providers, reducing disputes and improving collaboration.
- Downstream: Customer-facing innovations such as fuel station loyalty programs, mobile apps for digital payments, real-time digital invoicing and self-service portals that empower retail customers and distributors.
By enabling transparent, data-driven engagement, oil and gas companies can strengthen external relationships, reduce friction and build brand trust. In a highly scrutinized industry, this kind of customer and partner confidence becomes a vital competitive edge.
Once customer and partner engagement is strengthened, enterprises must ensure that all of these interactions along with internal operations comply with global standards, audits and risk frameworks. That’s where Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) becomes the next essential pillar of transformation.
10. Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
Few industries are as heavily regulated as oil and gas. From exploration rights and drilling safety to emissions reporting and financial compliance, companies face strict oversight at every stage of the value chain. Failure to comply can result in costly fines, reputational damage, or even shutdowns. RISE with SAP integrates governance, risk and compliance (GRC) into daily operations, giving enterprises the tools to stay ahead of regulatory requirements while managing operational risks.
Use cases across domains include:
- Upstream: Compliance management for exploration licenses, drilling permits and safety certifications to ensure operations meet local and international standards.
- Midstream: Automated audit trails for pipeline safety inspections, incident reporting and adherence to environmental transportation regulations.
- Downstream: Integrated financial compliance, emissions tracking and sustainability reporting for refinery operations and retail distribution.
With embedded GRC capabilities, enterprises can proactively manage risks, simplify audits and ensure that compliance isn’t an afterthought but a built-in part of operations. By uniting compliance with efficiency, SAP enables oil and gas companies to operate responsibly while maintaining investor and stakeholder trust.
Together, these ten capabilities show how RISE with SAP delivers digital transformation across the oil and gas value chain enabling enterprises to be agile, efficient, sustainable and future-ready.
Why Choose RiseAscend as Your Preferred RISE with SAP Provider for Oil & Gas
Digital transformation in oil and gas is about more than deploying technology; it is about aligning complex upstream, midstream and downstream operations under a single, intelligent platform. With decades of industry challenges in mind, RiseAscend helps oil and gas enterprises unlock the full power of RISE with SAP, ensuring transformation delivers real-world results across efficiency, safety, sustainability and profitability.
Here’s what sets us apart:
- Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of oil and gas value chains, from exploration and drilling to pipelines, refining and retail distribution.
- Proven SAP Delivery: Experience in designing and implementing SAP solutions that address regulatory compliance, asset reliability and integrated supply chains.
- End-to-End Transformation: From strategy and roadmap design to migration, integration and continuous optimization, we manage the complete journey.
- Sustainability Focus: Helping enterprises track, report and reduce their environmental impact with SAP’s ESG and sustainability solutions.
- Future-Ready Approach: Leveraging cloud, IoT, analytics and digital twins to prepare oil and gas businesses for the next decade of energy transition.
At RiseAscend, we don’t just implement RISE with SAP, we deliver industry-specific digital ecosystems that empower oil and gas enterprises to stay resilient, compliant and competitive in a rapidly evolving energy landscape. Get in touch for a RISE with SAP industry demo today.
