Blockchain for Energy (B4E) has announced that it will shortly go to market with its new Smart Contracts solutions. These solutions, which allow for increased speed and high levels of efficiency, have been developed by Worley in collaboration with B4E and Chevron.
“Blockchain for Energy members Worley and Chevron were instrumental in the concepting, development and testing of these solutions which clearly demonstrates the strength and ability of our collaboration and signals the start of the great things yet to come. Working in collaboration with our members is what we do best”
B4E’s inclusive approach and holistic view on technologies enables it to create the right solution at the right time. In addition, its vision to build a private permissioned blockchain network allows it to share these solutions and ideas across its membership base for the benefit of the entire industry.
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Smart contracts are programs stored on a blockchain which run when conditions or criteria are met. They are used to automate the execution of terms and conditions of a paper contract so that all participants can immediately see the outcome, without any party’s involvement or loss of time. They can also automate workflows, by acknowledging an action and then triggering the next action when certain conditions are met.
In realizing the potential of this technology, Blockchain for Energy and its members quickly went to work on determining best practices and use cases for the industry at large. Their focus fell on the manual nature of the Procure to Pay workflow that involved Work Order approvals, Timesheet approvals, and Invoicing. This solution looked to resolve issues around industry practices that were creating inflated costs and delays in payments and to create proven, secure, solutions that provided an immediate demonstration of their value.
A pilot was conducted under the B4E Smart Contracts Program between B4E members Chevron and Worley. From the generated data, B4E were able to develop a project which took paper contracts and automated them into digital Smart Contracts to be run on Blockchain technology. This solution, when applied to the Procure to Pay process, realized greater transparency and a more seamless way of working between the contractual parties thus saving time and money. Smart Contracts, combined with blockchain and other technologies, opens up opportunities to stop reworking the same old legacy systems and to truly transform the way we do back-end processes. This makes them seamless and more transparent with minimal human intervention and eliminates rework and reconciliations.
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The pilot resulted in a 60% reduction in processing of timesheet approvals and an 80% reduction in turnaround time. This pilot also provided complete transparency to all transacting parties reducing the probability of disputes and simplifying their resolution. It was coded by Worley and was run on a BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) platform called Strato which was hosted by B4E vendor BlockApps. From the proven results generated, B4E and its members now plan to go to market with standard industry grade Smart Contract templates to ease adoption and scaling for members and the industry at large. B4E will start with the Procure to Pay elements and move to other types of digital contracts beyond Procure to Pay as the need arises.
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