Ease data deluge with ‘ubiquitous business intelligence’

As a result, E&P professionals’ abilities to process data are impeded – whether evaluating new field development opportunities, bidding for leases or getting oil or gas out of the reservoir faster and more efficiently.

One increasingly viable solution is to expand cost-effective, easy-to-use business intelligence (BI) capabilities into field operations. Until recently, BI capabilities were available only to exploration and production (E&P) companies’ financial analysts looking for more efficient ways to maximize return on capital and cut costs. Today, the need for BI tools has extended to engineers, geologists, geophysicists, geoscientists and operations personnel. This expanded need leads to the possibility of “ubiquitous BI,” which takes deep problem-solving capabilities from the hands of just a few into the hands of everyone who needs them to make critical E&P decisions.

For example, geophysicists and geologists commonly work on interdisciplinary development teams with reservoir and production engineers, geoscientists, sedimentologists, petrophysicists and other E&P disciplines. Together, they predict performance in developing new fields or in extending existing ones. New and more widely available BI tools amplify teams’ abilities to view near-real-time information as easy-to-read key performance indicators (KPIs). This allows them to do things like compare production performance and ROI vs. available capital, revenue and profit per barrel and other business-health indicators as shown in the screen capture. Operations teams can now see information from dispersed departments as visual KPIs in a matter of seconds or minutes to help identify the most economic drilling investments. This information was previously captured in dozens of reports that took days or weeks to access and analyze.

This new operations monitoring and visualization approach results in more informed decisions and helps teams better manage their assets. With a new and more dynamic level of agility, oil and gas executives, managers, engineers and front-line operations personnel are empowered to respond to today’s regulatory, competitive and economic imperatives. Engineers can analyze an asset’s performance, identify which wells are not producing according to plan, and also analyze cost burdens such as lifting costs or energy consumption.

Today’s more powerful, visual and people-centric BI platforms, such as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, represent the next wave of capabilities that bring people new opportunities for optimized production, higher profits and safer operations. PerformancePoint Server integrates powerful analytical tools with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and familiar, easy-to-use Office products that include a set of unified communications tools to complement the BI tools. This solution empowers teams to collaborate and work effectively and efficiently no matter where they are.

For example, predicted production profiles and patterns are sometimes off target and can alter a company’s strategy in pursuing its development plans. Interdisciplinary E&P teams can use BI tools to quickly analyze KPIs and rank a portfolio of development opportunities.

With KPI dashboards and scorecards already established as performance-management tools, the door is open for a new wave of technology with color-coded alerts and equipment animations and also capable, 24x7 collaborative environments. The performance heat map is an important visual cue that can more quickly enhance a person’s understanding of an operational situation beyond combing through the numbers. This next generation of KPI scorecards, dashboards and performance maps, which include advanced visual cueing and real-time collaboration, enable exploration teams to analyze data and make quicker and better decisions.

BI analytics of both financial and engineering data provide transformational decision support and performance management for the modern E&P global operator. These new, intuitive and visual tools provide the foundation for E&P professionals in many disciplines to leverage data in new ways. It’s ultimately about putting BI in the hands of those people who need it most – everyone. People can easily visualize and evaluate E&P metrics and make faster and better decisions with right-time, role-based, and context-relevant data that will help upstream companies increase production, improve safety and remain competitive.
Visit www.microsoft.com/oilandgas for more information.