Podcast: Business Intelligence
It's More Than Just a Dashboard for Energy and Oil & Gas Companies
with Liz Litkowski, VP of Enterprise Integration
Business Intelligence is about spotting key information, digging out trends
associated with that key information, and then analyzing that key information so that
you can turn data into critical decision making criteria.
Why Business Intelligence? First let’s look at what the Aberdeen group has learned. They have measured
best in class companies by doing a survey of more than 285 organizations and looking at the elements that make
up a best-in-class company. They analyzed the top twenty percent of companies, who are excellent at profits,
customer service, and higher sales; and have noted a key difference between those using BI and dashboards, and
those not using dashboards across all the key elements inside the business. The best companies measure their key
performance indicators (KPI), drive that strategy from the top, and take advantage of technology such as Business
Intelligence to do so.
Gartner Group has looked at Business Intelligence from another angle and reported that more than 35% of the top
5,000 global companies regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their businesses.
What about Business Intelligence for Oil and Gas Companies? Some of the information that is very critical
for an upstream oil and gas or energy organization includes the following:
- What are sales today?
- How are sales represented by elements of gas?
- How are sales represented by our oil production basis?
- What kind of price point can we get for my commodities of oil and gas?
- How is production tracking against forecast?
The important thing here is better visibility into key metrics. It’s important to know not only the raw information
but also key trends associated with that information combined with a balance of what’s going on in the market.
Dashboard charts [see examples in podcast] demonstrate pricing information, sales volume information, and production
volume information. Applying Business Intelligence to industry specific information is very, very critical. You will
see the following oil & gas examples in the podcast.
Example 1: A Production Project. Every day, a company within an upstream oil and gas organization takes
a look at their morning report. In this example, Business Intelligence in a morning report gives the energy
company a quick indication at a glance of their production. A dashboard gauge indicates the goal for the year
and the current production point relative to that goal. Within a Business Intelligence dashboard, you can now
drill down to more detailed information. The company can then find specific fields that are performing
as "Superstars".
Example 2: Asset Management. Asset management is critical in the oil and gas industry. In particular,
companies typically want to sell off assets at a very specific point of profitability. Through Business
Intelligence, you can discover downtime in those energy assets you are trying to sell and through a BI
dashboard, you can quickly drill down to understand the detail to better prepare your presentation to
potential investors.
Tracking Trends in Oil and Gas. It’s interesting to take a look at many different organizations and
the fact that they come up with similar key performance indicators. Some common Business Intelligence needs
include the following:
- Tracking budget versus actual for an operation
- Tracking the development process and status in drilling wells and setting up projects
- Production analysis; trending oil and gas volume by state, by province, or by country
- Drill-down visibility to the well level
- Looking at land data to measure cash flow associated with leases
The Dashboard is not just a set of random tools - WellPoint Systems has built industry-specific templates
configured to standard performance measurements that an energy company needs to monitor. Available templates
include Lease Operating Statement, AFE Comparison, Production Analysis, Revenue vs. Production, Developed
Acreage, and many others. As the podcast demonstrates, we supply the set of KPIs that companies view every
day, along with flexibility to customize to your specific requirements.
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