Repsol will commercialise its big data and artificial intelligence platform among businesses

Repsol, with the collaboration of Accenture, will commercialise ARiA, the data and analytics cloud platform that was born as a development for its own use, and which will now help other companies to accelerate the use of big data and deploy artificial intelligence.

ARiA is designed to facilitate the democratisation of data in the organisation, extracting its full value and streamlining decision making. The platform includes solutions for data ingestion, different configuration alternatives in the Microsoft Azure cloud, data governance tools from its development lab and machine learning models, as well as different self-service tools.

In this way, any employee, regardless of their analytical skills, can make data-driven decisions. Accenture will design, develop and implement the ARiA business plan, using its experience and knowledge of the industry in Spain and internationally, and will carry out the development of commercial and technical proposals with contributions from Repsol as an expert developer and platform expert, as well as an advisor on the creation of a data driven culture in organisations, scaling the use of big data and artificial intelligence in the event that the potential client needs it.

Working together, both Repsol and Accenture will also identify possible solutions developed in ARiA that can be marketable and applicable to other companies, such as specific business solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, both for industrial and commercial or management areas. This initiative is in addition to the project that both companies have underway for the development, operation and maintenance of the data platform over the next five years, making Accenture one of Repsol's main partners in its digital transformation programme.

Two years ago, Repsol decided to invest in the development of its own big data and analytics platform, called ARiA, on Azure, Microsoft's cloud, with the aim of being able to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence solutions and to scale the use of data and analytics to most of the processes in all its business units. The goal was to have a single platform that would become the "digital brain" of the company, capturing and extracting data from all the sources available to the different businesses and corporate areas, and transferring it to its datalakes (repositories capable of storing large volumes of raw data of any kind), waiting to be used for decision-making, either through its own advanced analytics "laboratory" or through self-service tools for employees.

In this way, the company's set of digital analytical cases are built on ARiA, by extracting all the knowledge from the data and developing models and algorithms that provide maximum intelligence to processes and decision-making.

In addition, the platform adapts to the needs and capabilities of each user, depending on data consumption and processing, as it is capable of performing them in an agile, efficient and large-scale manner.

ARiA has directly contributed to the achievement of part of the objectives of Repsol's Digital Programme, which accumulates returns of up to 300 million euros until 2020, of which 150 million are specific to the use of data, analytics and artificial intelligence.

In 2017, Repsol launched its Digitalisation Plan as a fundamental element to tackle the energy transition, sustainability and emissions reduction, and to make progress in decarbonisation, relying on different digital technologies and tools, such as big data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, among others.

The Plan has brought about a significant change in corporate culture when it comes to making the most of data and doing so in a way that is more transversal to all businesses and with a systematised methodology, with which to predict and anticipate decisions and achieve significant efficiencies.