Bharat Petroleum pitches for automated petrol bunks

Public-sector Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), which is currently implementing the fully automated petrol stations for the elimination of product adulteration and other malpractices at its retail outlets, is hoping to win over the confidence of both the dealers and customers by showcasing the advantages the new solutions offer.

Though the full cost of automation, which is close to Rs 6 lakh for the basic version, is being borne by the company itself, it is trying to convince the dealers on its advantages in terms of better inventory management and enhanced customer confidence.

"In fact, our dealers are voluntarily coming forward to adopt the automation in Andhra and elsewhere after seeing its advantages," Sanjay Krishnamurti, executive director of BPCL, told Business Standard.

While it is part of the company's design to eliminate black sheep from its retail network and ensure the company specified quality of fuel to the end users by remotely tracking the density and quantity of fuel being dispensed at these outlets through automation, the company is promising higher productivity levels of manpower employed by the dealer through the automation.

According to Krishnamurti, a service boy in fully automated petrol station can handle 4-5 fuel dispensers on his own. The company is confident of realising the full return on this new investment in 3-4 years.

From the consumer perspective, these stations eliminate the possibility of all kinds of cheating. "This solution carries automatic billing, enables swiping of credit/debit cards on the fuel counter itself. It gives the information of the density of the fuel on real-time basis," he said. Back office data received from the new machines would also generate bonus points to reward the customers on the loyalty front.

BPCL is currently implementing the automation in those petrol stations having sales of over 200 kilolitres of fuel a month and focusing on retail outlets on highways.

While close to 200 of the over 643 retail outlets in Andhra come under this category, the number that goes for automation in the next 6-8 month period would be between 1,800 and 2,000. The company has already launched two fully automated outlets in the state, one in Gooti in Kurnool district and the other in the suburbs of Hyderabad city.

BPCL is implementing the high-end version of the fully automated fuel stations at the company-run outlets, 260 of them in the country, to monitor the transactions and quality of product on real-time basis.

The point of sale and back-office system will be integrated with a radio frequency identification (RFID) based tagging system. Each attendant will be provided with RFID tags to unlock the dispensing units for transactions and for other details to track the employee performance.

Shrihari Bhat, general manager, NCR retail solutions, which is implementing both the hardware and software solutions for BPCL in South and Eastern parts of the country, said the new platform would also enhance the customer-attendant relations resulting in better service and loyalty.

BPCL currently has a market share of 30 per cent in petrol and 27 per cent in diesel sales in the country.