BrandX Energy (BX) from its inception has been an innovator and forward-thinking organization often pushing boundaries and charting unknown territories while still maintaining a level of business conservatism that has given shareholders peace of mind and confidence in the business decisions that corporate management has made to reduce expenses and increase profit revenues. One such departure from the mainstream has been BX's interest in implementing VoIP communication services company-wide to reduce expenses related to national and international phone calls and telecommunication services. As most traditional corporations, BX had been implementing a PBX system at the corporate headquarters and at its refinery locations for many years, with pipeline and terminals (P&T) and divisional offices using standard telephone services provided by the local telco. However, with the promises of VoIP, BX has begun a shift in its operating practices with regards to telecommunication services.
BX began quite inconspicuously with one of the smaller refinery operations that the organization owns. BX opted to use this as the first phase of its implementation of VoIP services at one of their Gulf Coast refineries. The overall implementation plan calls for installing VoIP hardware and software for four types of locations: refinery operations, corporate operations, P&T operations and divisional operations. The execution phase started with an installation and beta test at the newest Gulf Coast refinery and hailed as a success. With this triumph, BX has opted to begin rolling out VoIP services at the refinery level first, investigating which refinery locations are prime candidates for the service at this time and which, due to infrastructure cos...
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...e to detect outages, escalate issues pertaining to these outages and troubleshoot outages when possible.
While integrating VoIP has been a daunting task, proper management and team cooperation has managed to minimize outages and poor installations while maximizing performance at each installed site. Currently most of the Gulf Coast refineries have been migrated to VoIP with much success and in spite of recent events with hurricane Katrina, the impeccable attention to detail and foresight has enabled the sites to maintain operations with minimal down time. BX Energy has always been at the forefront of technology be it in refining arena or in the technology arena or any arena between. But with due diligence and careful attention to detail, this forward-thinking approach coupled with careful planning has made BX a formidable success in the oil and refining business.