E-FWD sat down with SmplCo, the energy innovation specialists, to discuss why the energy industry often struggles to embrace digital innovation. The answer lies in something they all have already… data.

Data should be energy firms’ superpower. They generate so much of it.

And the insights that lie within that data can make a profound difference to your operational efficiency, your decision-making, and your ability to uncover opportunities and innovations that will futureproof your business.

But energy companies the world over struggle to get a grip on data. Too often it’s fragmented and locked away in silos –  and often jealously guarded by domain specialists.

The solutions can be just as confusing. There are more platforms on offer than ever claiming to fix this, and a new tech algorithm appears virtually every few minutes to make these bigger, better and faster.

Artificial intelligence is a case in point. AI can work miracles, but where do you start? Can you tell your Optical Character Recognition models from your machine learning? It’s not much use – and very expensive – if you can’t.

Magic Numbers

In our recent E-FWD masterclass, Andreas Melvær and Bjørn Ivar Knudsen, said the place to start was with “Magic Numbers”.

In that mass of data, in all its different forms, there are statistics which are key indicators. These are the numbers within any given project that give you the insight you need to change behaviours and activities.

But how do you find these magic numbers?

The thing to look for – to make dramatic improvements in how you operate – is where these numbers can only be accessed through manual reporting.

Manual reporting leads to inconsistencies in reporting style and quality, it locks data away in silos, and it means you can’t leverage awesome new digital technologies like AI (which require structured data sets).

On a daily basis, it wastes hours and hours of engineers’ time and people hate doing it.

Worse still, maintaining these manual tasks will make it harder to attract new talent to your company, because they won’t stand for that style of work.

Getting started

To succeed in digital innovation, SmplCo says, first you’ve got to move fast.

This is partly because the demands of the energy transition are making speed imperative but, more importantly, because getting initial buy-in and momentum will make or break your attempts to master your data.

SmplCo have put their money where their mouth is, creating a business model that serves this urgency.

They start all their projects by creating a high-res, clickable digital prototype in just five days.

This allows them to work with energy firms to quickly discover those magic numbers, while ensuring the people wanting to drive digital innovation have instant results to align their stakeholders, win buy-in, and build momentum.

Working fast also minimises risk – something the energy industry is, understandably, very keen on.

If you promote a succeed (or fail) fast approach, you will limit the amount of time and money required to iterate and test digital projects.

Muddying the waters

In our Masterclass, SmplCo’s executives discussed an example around mud tracking. The team had been brought in by a non-operator to assess performance at a drilling site.

SmplCo secured daily data from the contractor and were able to track the performance at well sites, presenting them using a ‘traffic light’ performance system, on an easy-to-use dashboard.

The results provided insights into the mud that came as a surprise even to the operator… They discovered – in real time – that wells were going out of spec.

When they investigated, they found they were being sold old mud, rather than new.

With manual reporting, there was no way of achieving this.

These are the kind of insights that can make and save you millions.

The project also freed up time equivalent to four full-time engineers’ annual hours.

In an industry bedevilled by skills shortages, being able to move colleagues to work on other projects had a “huge impact”, SmplCo’s Bjørn Ivar said. 

Democratise the data

The final piece of this data puzzle – if you want to drive serious change – is to democratise the data you’ve harnessed.

With the advent of AI, it is now possible not just to automate manual tasks, collect information, and let specialists analyse it.

You can present the results so people at every level of your company can draw out inferences and make decisions.

“Our aim is always to liberate this data, to take the data out of the silos and make it available in an understandable format for everyone, from engineers to C-level executives,” said Andreas.

Such a move is not always straightforward. People do not always want to relinquish their control of siloed sources of knowledge, throughout a company organisation.

Again, this is where quick iterations lead to quick wins.

Rapid prototyping helps the upper echelons of a company agree to a digital trial and shows colleagues how much more productive – and agreeable! – their day can be.

As the mud tracker project shows, actionable insights are not far away.

“Our prototype was built in a week and we had the platform up and running, displaying live data about a month later,” said Andreas.

The energy industry is evolving. To keep pace with change, companies must think about how best to face the future.

Accessing and analysing existing data, breaking it out of silos and into the broader discussion, will be an increasingly important part of the future.

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