There are three pressing technology issues that Oilfield Services (OFS) companies must address in order to gain efficiencies, save money, and streamline their supply chains.
Oilfield service companies (OFS) provide support services to oil and gas production companies – leasing drilling rigs, repairing wells, manufacturing drilling equipment, processing seismic data, and more. Highly impacted by global energy prices, these organizations often experience major revenue fluctuations that can sometimes occur without much advance notice.
Led by Halliburton Company and Schlumberger Limited (the two largest oilfield services organizations), the industry is also impacted by a wide range of regulations that dictate activities like drilling locations. The problem is that many OFS companies have fallen behind the technology curve and rely on manual and/or disparate systems that don’t “talk” to one another or enable systematic, streamlined business management.
Here are three key pain points that most OFS companies are dealing with right now, and how a fully-integrated, cloud ERP can help alleviate these challenges (and more):
1) Heavy reliance on paper-based processes. “We see a lot of OFS companies still pushing paper around,” said Joshua Bone, Professional Services and OFS Manager at NXTurn, a full-services, 5-Star NetSuite Solution Provider with over 500 installations. “Of those firms that are using technology, most of it is still very patchwork and unintegrated.” In some cases, entire business processes are managed with paper or emails, which serve as key communication tools across departments. A customer will call in and the message goes on a note and gets stuck on a wall. “If that note falls down, gets stepped on, and is never picked up,” Bone said, “you lose that deal.”
2) Technology systems that don’t “talk” to one another. Disparate, legacy, and proprietary systems that don’t share data can create major challenges for OFS companies. Having a single source of truth that’s accessible to all users—and not just the driver who walks off with a field ticket in hand—has helped OFS companies streamline their operations, save those lost revenues, and scale up or down as their industry fluctuates. “To ensure that everything runs smoothly, there has to be great communication between the producers and service providers,” says Bone. NXTurn’s OFS Vertical Edition for NetSuite offers multiple options for bettering those relationships, all while enabling the scaling up or down of an OFS company.
3) Inability to track revenue by job or region. With an integrated ERP, OFS companies can also track revenue and cost at the region, sub-region, and formation level. “That's of enormous importance when it comes to reporting and metrics,” said Bone, who points out that while companies typically know their product line classifications, locations, and subsidiaries, few know their profit and loss (P&L) data for specific well sites. “We're able to leverage all of that valuable data right inside of NetSuite.” Recently, NXTurn worked with a national cementing company that was using a highly disjointed, fragmented approach to developing formulations to be used at well sites. The company had no inventory management system, nor did it have a system in place for efficient dispatch-to-cash processing. Finally, the service provider had no way to track its fixed assets across all of its multiple locations and jobsites. By implementing NXTurn’s OFS Vertical Edition for NetSuite, the company resolved all of those issues and today remains on a healthy growth track.
NXTurn’s OFS Vertical Edition for NetSuite takes a systematic approach to helping companies find the efficiencies in the services process, then maximizing that value across the supply chain. The solution’s streamlined dispatch-to-cash process, for example, ensures that any service that’s been assigned will be billed. This is a vast improvement over the manual, paper-based processes that many OFS companies continue to rely on. Other disparate business systems that plague OFS companies include financial management, revenue management, fixed assets, procurement, order management, billing, inventory management, and services delivery.
By integrating all functions into a comprehensive cloud computing suite, NXTurn’s OFS Vertical Edition for NetSuite improves command and control of an OFS business and simplifies field service. This unified operating system empowers employees to view and share one true version of data in real-time, leading to greater collaboration among departments, clear visibility for management, increased productivity across the business, and greater revenue.
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