A Journey From Digitization to Digitalization

The once-enigmatic zeros and ones that helped in coding simple information have come a long way, almost a full circle. Digital transformation began when the world started digitizing - a simple process of converting one's budget, once written in a diary, into an excel sheet or a photograph, that could have succumbed to mold, now secure on your laptop or your phone, or better still – the cloud. Most contemporary information now exists in the digitized format.

However, it is when digitized information starts talking to each other that things start to get interesting. Initially used for record keeping, the digitized data paved way for transformation of the world and revealed the massive potential it had. It was the beginning of digitization - a process where data is transformed into actionable knowledge. Digitalization helps in improving, enhancing and transforming the smallest of functions to the biggest of decision-making or risk-taking abilities. With customizable functionality and data-driven approaches, digitalization is helping different businesses derive significant value and nurture digital transformation in the truest sense.

Technologies such as advanced analytics, robotics, blockchain, and automation are aiding digitalization and many sectors have been reaping the benefits of digital transformation. The oil and gas sector hasn't remained untouched and the transformation is phenomenal. While digitization helped the sector to get organized, digitalization is helping it enhance recovery, optimize production, maintain better standards of safety and nurture a multi-skilled talent pool, and this is just the beginning of a long and exciting journey.

At Vedanta Cairn Oil & Gas India we are spearheading the transformation from digitization to digitalization with project 'Nirmaan'. As a part of this digital journey, we formed a Cairn Digital Council - a virtual team of 30 people -represented by the best minds from our Strategic Business Units (SBUs) and core technical functions. The idea behind the digital council, is with this cross-functional team, we are able to define, execute, and sustain any initiative with co-ownership with the business.

One example of a digitization to digitalization story is what we are doing in our core operations areas - that is our rig-less well interventions. Several (digitized) operational reports are generated daily as interventions are performed across our wells. We are now digitalizing this by applying text mining and advanced analytics on this huge minefield of valuable data to analyze operating time per unit, benchmark ourselves with the best in the industry and significantly reduce non-productive time.

Through a series of such stories on digitization to digitalization, we intend to share how we are executing small and big ideas in bringing about Digital NIRMAAN at Cairn. Next we will take you along on our journey towards becoming a next-gen workspace. Stay tuned.