"Customer interactions through these platforms continue to be at the top of our priorities. We have seen changes, and with a change in focus sales have significantly increased, and we want to be able to react to that customer experience. I would say that now customer-centricity along with data is the new priority for our business."
In terms of manufacturing, Motor Oil developed the concept of a smart factory. Giannakakis explains this is focused on five pillars: digital engineering; digital production, where the remote operation centre is the north star; digital asset management; digital workers and equipping them with the relevant tools so they can perform their tasks; and the digital optimisation of processes.
“Everything to do with the smart factory is classified in those five pillars," he says. "With the help of our partner ecosystem working in each of these pillars allowed us to achieve increased production, reduced downtime, reduced production cost, and focus on product optimisation."
Giannakakis says that although COVID-19 has certainly accelerated all these processes, the need to do this already existed. "The challenges in the energy and oil and gas industries were already there. It's an industry that needs to change and with COVID this has been magnified and accelerated,” says Giannakakis.
"At the same time you have two frontiers: you have to keep the business going with the new reality, while not losing time regarding the digital transformation."
Strong partnerships have been vital for this. "I've always been a big believer in having relevant partner ecosystems,” he says. “Companies like ours, who are manufacturing and retail companies, cannot focus on technology ourselves, because it's not part of our mandate. We need to have a partner ecosystem around us to help us scale up and provide us with the relevant innovation in the areas and the priorities that we set. It's exactly what we have done both before and during the crisis."
He explains that having partners in various sectors help them to have the right focus and pilot new systems. "It's good for us to be able to go with a swift pilot to learn and have a partner at the same time ready to scale it up. We need to be able to combine the value offering from International and Local partners in order to be able to maximize the impact.”
From the International field SAP is an important partner for Motor Oil. "They help us with all of our transactions, whether it's on the customer side or the manufacturing side. Every inventory and every shipment lives in SAP, so it's a no-brainer for us to look to SAP to also help us innovate."
One of the largest local players is OTE. OTE has provided Motor Oil with a turn-key solution to modernise its corporate network with a Software Defined-WAN implementation. The SD-WAN solution provides a virtual WAN architecture, with users controlling and managing the entire system via software running on a central platform.
With the implementation of the SD-WAN project, Motor Oil will have achieved a simplified, fully secured network, with high availability and scalability to improve both the user experience and productivity.
Looking ahead, Giannakakis believes the major oil players will all adapt to new ways of working post-COVID.
"I think we are going to live in a new reality where our priorities and our digital transformation will be accelerated, but also I think the traditional model was always focused on two pillars: innovation of the business model, and the operational side,” concludes Giannakakis. “Now we've added sustainability into the mix too. It's a strong directive from the European Union but also from across the sector. Whatever is good for the environment is good for the business too."