Author Archives: Certis Inc.

Unknown's avatar

About Certis Inc.

Digital solutions architects. Servicing the energy industry since 2001. This blog contains the views and opinions of the founder and CEO of Certis IS Inc.

Improved Seismic Data Services Cycle Time By 50 Weeks – Looking back at a project delivered by Certis Inc.

Leave a reply

When you’re an Oil & Gas exploration company that manages over 5,000 lines and surveys a year, efficiency in managing data is vital. Yet, three years ago, a company that size had never measured the efficiency of the process of delivering data to the business. There was a general feeling that 80% of the time the process was acceptable. However, they could not see what was going wrong the other 20% of the time. Even within the 80%, they had to wonder if ‘acceptable’ was the best they could do. In essence, they knew they had their weaknesses, but were too close to the problems to see the solutions. They turned to a process improvement firm with oil and gas data experience to shed some light on any workflow problems they felt, but couldn’t see. This is when we came in.

To give you a visual of the work done for the E&P Company, we need to take a step back in time. Remember the days before email? Now, go further back to a time you don’t remember. Imagine a time before mail trucks and planes, a time, when you if you wanted to mail a letter to Spain, you needed to put it on a ship. It would take months to get there. It would need to withstand seasick sailors, ocean storms, and Moby Dick to arrive at its destination. You know it may never be as pretty as the day you mailed it. Now, pretend that time was three years ago. Three years ago, your letter spent months aboard a ship and now, you zap it electronically in seconds.

That is what this oil & gas company has gone through in the past three years. By improving their Seismic data processes, have gone from taking a year to complete a full cycle of receipt to archival to two weeks or less. Remember, in 2010, the oil company considered the delivery time for data to the business as acceptable in 80% of the cases. While they were suspicious of inefficiencies, they could not imagine going from the mail ship to email in three years. But that is exactly what they did.

Every business occasionally needs an outsider to look in to get a better vision of their systems potential. The company began to see that their processing was far from optimal, but it could be.

$250 Million Oil Take-Over Deal Implodes Due To Disastrous Data Management

Leave a reply

As professionals in the oil and gas sector we all know that when it comes to a merger and acquisition (M&A) that having access to quality data is essential. In its absence deals don’t get made, investors lose $000,000s and livelihoods are put at risk.

So we were pretty taken aback recently to hear of one deal – of a public company – which fell through because the organization couldn’t even list their complete assets with confidence – such was the mess of their data.

We were talking with a CEO recently who “vented” about a recently failed acquisition.  He is a major player who has worked in the sector since the mid-1970s, he told us here why the $150 Million to $250 million investment his company was prepared to make didn’t just fall flat, but imploded:  “Despite asking this company repeatedly to give us access to their “complete” data sets they failed to deliver time and again. We became increasingly frustrated and discouraged to the extent we wouldn’t even make a proposal in the region of $80 million for the company.  What was so galling to us was that it was obvious this company badly needed an investor and had approached us to bid”

We all know what data is needed for M&A investments to happen, some of which we can get from public records and from commercial organizations such as I.H.S and Drilling Info (in the USA). But those sources alone are not nearly sufficient. So what were they thinking? Did they think data would take care of itself? Or was someone just not doing his/her job well?

The CEO continues “…. in the past when companies were under pressure, typically a lot of data got swept under the rug as it were. Today though, investors demand tighter regulation of data and I suspect that, because of this, in ten years’ time some companies just aren’t going to make it. If our company had been allowed to invest and take over we could have solved many of the organization’s problems, saved some jobs and even added value. Sadly, in this event, due to poor management of critical data that scenario was never allowed to take place. The deal never even got past the first hurdle. No-one is going to invest $millions when they don’t have a clue of (or confidence in the data of) what they’re buying.”

Considering this was a company which had a responsibility for public money the management team should never have been allowed free rein without critical data management regulations or at the very least “guidelines”.

What is your opinion?