Best practice can be your best friend

By Noël van Driessche

O&G. “In many cases there’s no time for fundamental analysis and long term improvement plans.” Would you agree with this statement?
Noël van Driessche. Yes. A lot of asset management departments are more operational maintenance organizations. The reason is the type of the business is strengthened by the culture (for example, fire-fighting is much more interesting and appreciated by the organization than making analysis and working on continues improvement).

But to be best in class, doing analysis and long-term improvement are crucial. To make this happen, it is necessary to split up the ‘To Do’ and the ‘To Improve’ roles in the asset management organization.

O&G. Many companies find it difficult to devote enough time and money to finding qualified staff. What are their options?
NVD. This is a vicious cycle. There will never be enough time without the proper staffing. Options may include the setup of a dedicated recruiting department, or finding collaborations with third parties experienced in this field.

Additional to strengthen the recruitment and flexibility, companies have to work on increasing of the effectiveness of their staff. By implementing good processes and an efficient organization, it is possible to get more out of your staff and to be an attractive employer.

O&G. Compliance provides a problem in many industries today. How can companies keep on top of this?
NVD. Businesses that never had to consider compliance issues before now must follow mandates such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, UK / EU legislation or other regulatory requirements that include International Standardization i.e. ISO 9001:2000 (Quality Management) & 14001 (Environmental Management).

As businesses seek to integrate systems and databases a significant number of companies are improving their control over processes and product quality by adopting good systems practices (GSP) for their internal systems. This can be achieved by taking a fresh look at available off-the-shelf user-friendly software packages that are, reliable, and fit for their intended purposes with regular updates as technology advances, this provides a structured framework policed by mandatory fields which encourages conformity that ultimately results in ensures compliance, after all that was one of the “computers” main goals from its conception.

O&G. How can your solutions help companies achieve their goals?
NVD. Our successes are anchored in our best practices. We take generally applicable elements from practical cases and develop these further to ready-to-implement solutions. Solutions in the areas like organization, processes, and benchmarking. We developed these best practices as we know that in many cases there is no time for in-depth analysis. Thanks to these best practices we are able to deliver results more quickly and more effectively .

At Stork AMS we aim to follow our customers in the globalization of their markets, and to further develop our capabilities as a global player. We are very willing to develop together with our customers since our future success is closely linked to their success. Working together with well-known universities and software developers we aim to stay ahead of our customer’s future challenges!

Noël van Driessche is VP, Stork Asset Management Solutions. Contact by telephone: +31-30-6691938 or email noel.vandriessche@stork.com.