David Petherick, Head of Marketing, talked to Dr. Esther Hayes, Operations Director at EnergySys, about how one of our customers is using the EnergySys Cloud platform for Corporate Production Reporting.
What is corporate reporting?
What we are referring to is reporting across a number of corporate assets – typically an asset will have its own production reporting system with its own allocation logic – but for corporate purposes, you need to present all the assets in a single report, with rolled-up figures, in order to see the big picture. It’s a top layer of reporting, for use by the corporate executive teams who are charged with running the business.
How did our customer realise they could carry out this process using our software – surely it’s for production allocation?
In any production allocation and reporting situation, you get a lot of data, and this particular client had a number of assets in different countries, which used different reporting systems from various suppliers. They wanted a way to reliably report production data drawn from all of their assets to the corporate entity. Because the EnergySys platform is inherently designed for flexibility and customer configuration, it can receive data from other systems. So while some of their assets use the EnergySys Production Allocation Cloud to manage their production allocation, we can also take data from other production reporting software.
What tools and training had to be put in place?
The end users did not need a lot of training since their use is limited to viewing the daily and monthly reports. As it’s a cloud system, they had no problems with access. Their IT team, with some training and support from us, had to put in place the interfaces to import data from existing systems – but these all are processes that they can configure themselves in the EnergySys platform. It was configuration, not programming or bespoke work – and that’s the great strength of EnergySys. Nothing but results, as we like to say.
How did they measure progress and do tests while they developed the application?
As they gradually configured and successfully added each asset, they simply added them to their test platform. Some of the assets came online at similar times, others were coming live across a longer period. And as with all of our customers, they have both a test platform and a live platform to work on – and so, once they knew everything was working, and they had conducted adequate tests, they simply transferred it to a live server, and their corporate reports went live to their company’s executive management.
As a result, they now have a much better handle on what their business is doing, and can see their position in a far more timely fashion.
How long did it take the customer to carry out the work, and what sort of cost was involved?
Their assets came on line one by one over a period of months, but actual input of man-hours was based on the time to carry out import configuration, which typically would take a few days for each asset. There was some time involved in creating specialised reports, but once the required format was set and tested, the reports run automatically.
What benefits have they gained from having the EnergySys Corporate Reporting system in place?
They used to have a full-time Production Technologist who would spent a great deal of their time cutting, copying and pasting from various spreadsheets, delivered by different parties in different formats, and at varying times, which were then collated together, and emailed around. That repetitive work needed to be carried out by a very well qualified and experienced individual, and it had to be checked carefully at every stage. Now, all of these systems automatically report, and the recipients just go in to look at the results.
So it’s now entirely automated. No opening and saving versions of spreadsheets, overwriting prior data sets, or having to make sure manually that data falls within allowable ranges. What is more, they are able to analyse their historical performance in ways that were just not possible with their large collection of spreadsheets. The Production Technologist now spends her time on production enhancement – and she is very pleased with that change! Now she can concentrate on getting more oil out of the reservoirs.
So do they enjoy the same benefits of SaaS as for our other Applications, such as managed backups and storage, no software updates , no special hardware, and a simple browser login?
Yes, it’s exactly the same – all of these benefits of the EnergySys Production Allocation Cloud apply. And as a result, they now have a much better handle on what their business is doing, and can see their position in a far more timely fashion. It’s brilliant.
Can other processes and applications be created in the same way using the EnergySys platform?
Yes, of course! The platform is remarkably flexible. A number of standardised applications are available, or the user can build their own. For example, one of our customers has created a product sales tracking application. They read the manual, and had some one-to-one training on how to configure EnergySys. They have completed two applications so far, and they are already working on a third. Once we’d given them the initial training, they carried out all of this work unassisted, simply using the standard Energysys platform and toolset. This is something that makes us very proud, because this is exactly what we designed EnergySys to support – and we’ve been delighted at how far and how fast our customers have taken it.