Upstream oil and gas faces relentless cost pressure—OpEx has surged 15–20% in recent years, while CapEx remains tight. Inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain volatility make “doing more with less” the new normal. Automation isn’t optional—it’s a survival strategy. According to McKinsey, automation can cut process costs by up to 45% and deliver payback in 12–18 months. In other words, business process automation in oil and gas is no longer optional; it forms the foundation of digital transformation ensuring better operational resilience.
This guide shows how operations, accounting, and supply chain teams can automate critical workflows—accounts payable, spend management, and contracts—to drive efficiency and resilience.
Business process automation (BPA) uses software to execute recurring business tasks with minimal human input. In upstream oil and gas, this includes source-to-pay activities such as sourcing, contract management, ordering, field ticket processing and finally invoice processing.
What Are the Key Benefits of BPA for Oil and Gas Companies?
BPA delivers the most value when applied to workflows that are repetitive, high-volume and prone to delays or errors — and upstream oil and gas operations are full of them! From invoice approvals to contract renewals, these processes often span field teams, office staff and external vendors, making them ideal candidates for automation. The following use cases highlight where automation can drive measurable impact across accounts payable, procurement, contracts and back-office workflows.
What Are the Top 5 Invoice Management Challenges in Oil and Gas?
How BPA Solves It:
Spend management automation gives upstream operators greater control over sourcing, approvals and purchasing across departments and field locations. By digitizing procurement workflows, companies can reduce maverick spend, accelerate order fulfillment and improve visibility into budget usage. This helps ensure that purchases align with approved vendors, negotiated pricing and operational priorities.
What Are the Top 5 Spend Management Challenges?
How Automated Spend Management Solves It:
Contract management automation helps upstream teams manage the full lifecycle of supplier and service agreements with greater speed and control. By digitizing contract drafting, approvals, renewals and compliance tracking, companies can reduce manual effort, avoid missed deadlines and ensure consistent terms across departments. This approach minimizes risk, improves visibility and supports stronger vendor relationships by keeping contracts accurate, accessible and audit-ready.
What Are the Top 5 Challenges With Contract Management?
How Automation Solves It:
Workflow automation connects tools, teams and data across departments to ensure tasks are routed, tracked and completed efficiently. It helps standardize execution, reduce delays and improve visibility across operational processes.
Examples of Workflow Automation in Upstream Oil and Gas:
AI-powered automation adds intelligence to workflows by identifying patterns, predicting outcomes and learning from historical data. Unlike traditional rule-based systems, AI adapts to changing inputs and improves over time. This makes deploying AI especially valuable in dynamic environments like upstream oil and gas. It enables systems to not only execute tasks faster but also anticipate issues and flag anomalies and surface insights that would otherwise be buried in operational noise. By layering AI into automation, companies shift from reactive process management to proactive decision-making.
What Are the Top AI Use Cases for BPA?
BPA delivers measurable returns for upstream oil and gas operators by reducing manual effort, accelerating workflows and improving data accuracy across departments. From accounts payable to procurement and contract management, automation helps cut processing costs, eliminate delays and increase visibility into spend patterns that ultimately drive smarter decisions. Companies adopting automation report lower invoice costs, fewer errors, faster cycle times and improved supplier relationships. These gains contribute to stronger margins and more resilient operations. For energy businesses dealing with price volatility and the drive for maximum capital efficiency, business automation drives tangible reductions in opex and capex, not to mention increased efficiency across multiple teams.
Key Benefits From BPA:
Getting started with BPA doesn’t require a full-scale overhaul, but it does require a smart, focused launch. The most successful upstream operators begin with a single department, map their existing workflows, and define clear success metrics before scaling. Automation doesn’t only involve adding technology to how you already do things; it’s also about aligning tools with real operational pain points and ensuring teams are equipped to adopt them. With the right foundation, even complex oil and gas environments can secure fast wins and long-term transformation.
Steps to Launch Automation Successfully:
Business process automation represents a strategic change, not just a technological improvement. For upstream oil and gas operators, automating core workflows like AP, procurement and contract management unlocks faster decisions, tighter controls and measurable cost savings. But the real value lies in building a foundation for scale, resilience and innovation. No matter where you are on your automation journey, the best time to start is now—because the right tools are already here, ready to deliver results.
From accounts payable automation to procurement workflows and contract management, Enverus helps upstream operators streamline processes, reduce costs and gain real-time visibility across the entire source-to-pay cycle. Our solutions are designed to:
Ready to unlock faster, smarter operations? Request a discovery call to explore how Enverus can help you reduce costs, improve compliance and transform your source-to-pay workflows.
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Outsource mineral phone and print and mail, so your land and accounting teams can focus on critical work.
EnergyLink software provides secure and convenient online access to oil and gas owner statements and account information — available 24/7.
Enverus consulting services are provided by a team of technology experts, designed to optimize customer usage and maximize ROI of their OpenInvoice solutions.
