The Client
This independent energy company is a rapidly growing enterprise, focused on the exploration, exploitation, development, acquisition and production of natural gas and crude oil in the United States. The company operates in a small number of strategic areas, with each undergoing aggressive development activity. As the company has grown, its business processes that were “good enough” in earlier stages experienced strain and became clear targets for improvement, both in terms of “people” efficiency and the use of information technology.
The Challenge
Management of information about the company’s key well assets and about activities related to those assets was critical to decision-making and productive interaction between business areas. From the origins of individual wells and throughout their life cycle, data was constantly created, received, and updated. In this case, the systems environment consisted of a loosely coupled combination of hosted technologies (Excalibur), on-premise packaged software (Aries), and a complex network of manually updated spreadsheets (Excel). The infrastructure proved increasingly more difficult to manage as the business experienced dramatic growth.
The Solution
Stonebridge was engaged to define a more efficient means of collecting and publishing the “gold standard” of well information to all interested parties throughout the company. To create the solution, Stonebridge decomposed the current manual process into its component parts and activities. With a clear mapping of where each data element originates, how it is updated, and who requires access to it, a more complete data model related to the well was composed. With the data in a more organized state, Stonebridge and the customer moved toward design of a web-based facility for managing this information.
This solution, utilizing the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform, provides a number of capabilities for the subject matter experts responsible for updating the well information. Data entry and update for defined wells is managed online through a common web-based interface. This provides secure control of the data elements and tracks the activity history related to data changes. Additionally, the solution provides a robust search interface that allows users of all skill levels direct access to information about the hundreds (and eventually thousands) of wells in which the company has operating interest. The solution itself is built not only to improve the current activities related to well data management, but also to expand and extend as the company’s portfolio grows. This includes the addition of new subject areas to the core well information – such as risk management and capital (AFE) expense – as well as the growth in the number of well assets.
As the environment expands, the customer is positioned to leverage the P2 Analytics platform as a powerful extension of this solution. Through visualization of the underlying data, the business is able to unlock trends, insights, and anomalies currently unavailable through “standard” reporting channels.
The Benefits
- Centralized data management facility to replace disparate manual activities
- Introduction of collaborative technologies to improve work within and between departments
- Higher assurance of data quality through common user interface and data source
- Activity tracking and version management of well data to satisfy auditing requirements
- Improved productivity through the use of search capabilities
- Less institutional “noise” - e.g., e-mail, shared network drive dependencies, file version control, communication of changes