American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2020 - 38

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SpecialReport: Computing & Analytics
How resilient individual operating
companies ultimately prove to be largely
will come down to how well they adapt
and respond on a case-by-case basis to
both challenges and opportunities during
what still may be a long haul. One way
operators are responding is by increasing
their mergers and acquisitions, which is
not necessarily bad. Two companies can
come together to structurally improve
their financial health and rebound from
the downturn stronger and more vigorous
as a united organization than they could
separately. This is especially true in unconventional plays, given their scale and
capital requirements. The questions that
matter deal with how their cultures fit together and how seamlessly their operations can be unified and integrated.
Another fundamental fact about the
industry deals not only with its proven
adaptability to changing market conditions, but its historical tendency to respond to those challenges by innovating.
Downturns usually yield technological
and operational advances. This downturn
will be no different, especially in the
areas of computing, data management
and information technology. Advances
being made today to help companies navigate their many obstacles ultimately will
provide new tools to maximize tomorrow's opportunities.
Using Enertia as an example, we have

always sought to innovate during downturns to enhance the performance of our
software and introduce new functionalities. Several enhancements are underway
right now, including efforts to improve
the user experience, extend mobile capabilities, automate data reporting, and incorporate artificial intelligence and
machine learning workflows. Some of
these features are scheduled to appear
very soon. Many factors weigh on the future of the oil and gas industry in a postcoronavirus world, but the experience of
2020 clearly demonstrates the importance of such capabilities to help people
work as efficiently and effectively as possible, both from the office or at home.
Priorities For Operators
Oil and gas companies have to take a
similar approach to implementing technological improvements. They have
learned a lot during the past six months,
and how they capture and apply the lessons learned will help differentiate them
as the industry recovers. The worst may
be over, but until the market bounces
back, oil and gas producers must continue to fight for survival. Whether courting an acquisition deal, establishing a
joint venture partnership or simply finding ways to streamline operating costs,
this is no time for complacency or sticking with the status quo. Instead, industry

The oil and gas companies positioned to succeed going forward will be those that embrace
technological solutions today to reduce cost, unlock efficiencies and innovate. Enterprise
resource planning software is the central framework that enables operators to maximize
economic performance, capture efficiencies across all operational areas, drive engineering
enhancements and optimize business decision making.

38 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

leaders must embrace nontraditional solutions to get through these nontraditional
times and prepare for better times ahead.
With so much out of their control in
terms of pricing and demand, oil and gas
producers need to focus on what they can
control: internal operations. To put it
bluntly, companies with inefficiencies,
bloat and baggage will struggle to attract
capital providers, business partners and
buyers. Like never before, the market will
favor companies that offer value in terms
of physical assets as well as the effectiveness of their operations. For these reasons, every company should prioritize
three measures:
Â· Reducing costs;
Â· Unlocking efficiencies; and
Â· Engineering innovation.
A lot of uncertainty remains about
what comes next for the oil and gas industry, but it is clear that the companies
positioned to succeed will be those that
embrace technological solutions addressing all three areas. Enterprise resource
planning (ERP) software is the central
nervous system that enables operators to
maximize economic metrics, identify and
achieve efficiencies across all their operating areas, and drive engineering enhancements.
Smaller, leaner independents have far
less fat to trim. Company leaders must
ask people inside the organization for
cost-saving ideas and look for ways to
leverage their companies' ERP software
to generate insights. Given the extraordinary cost pressures, companies need to
dive deep into their data to find overlooked savings opportunities. Technology
will make or break that effort. Depending
on the software and systems in place, decision makers could be working with an
integrated pool of updated data, or with
the opposite-an enterprise defined by
data silos and disconnected systems,
which will make reducing costs difficult.
Improving Efficiency
Efficiency has been the operative
word in the upstream for some time, and
oil and gas companies have made significant strides in trimming overall project
cycle times and shrinking nonproductive
time and costs, especially in drilling and
completion. Now the challenge is to find
meaningful efficiency gains not in one or
two particular areas, but across the entire
spectrum of an oil and gas company's operations-from land management and accounting, to drilling and production. It is

American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2020

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