PROCESS ALIGNMENT – UTILIZING YOUR ANALYTICS
Improving Operations Management Using Business intelligence
One of the biggest benefits of implementing Business Intelligence platforms in an oil and gas company is leaner and faster decision making. Measuring the benefits of Business Intelligence platforms and managing the decision making process can accelerate the Return on Investment and enhance the efficiency of operations. Oil and Gas companies must invest in BI implementation thus reducing the payback period and creating sustainable long term value.
Typical Business Intelligence projects are deployed in three major phases: Assessment; Solutioning and Deployment. To accelerate the business value generated for Oil and Gas companies, critical work stream needs to be added to their “Business Intelligence roadmap”.
This is the missing piece – “Process Intelligence” (Process improvement + Business Intelligence). This critical work stream involves key elements of Business Process Management coupled with the opportunities opened up by Business Intelligence.
There are two main reasons why “Process Intelligence” is different from the traditional operations that are practiced traditionally –
- Data velocity – Data velocity is the speed at which operational metrics are calculated and disseminated to various parts of the organization.
- Data transparency – Data transparency is the ease with which business data can be accessed my managers
These advantages will require organizations to realign their operations management processes in order to drive business value. The three key elements that need to be orchestrated tightly to achieve greater agility and precision are:
- Process alignment – The processes at an organization should enable an organization to make rapid and measured changes to their business. The speed of the changes must match the data velocity. The processes must also become tightly integrated across departments and hierarchies to reflect the newly found data transparency in the organization
- Data – The data needs to be disseminated in an accurate manner to ensure that the business is making the right decisions in a timely manner. To ensure this, the IT and business must ensure that there is a stringent check on Data Quality and Data availability across the organization. Any disruptions must be communicated to avoid business disruptions. Additionally, it is critical to ensure that operational metrics and KPIs are being calculated at the right frequency to avoid misinterpretation of the business problems.
- People – As organizations move away from the traditional reports and tasks of data compilation, employees will be able to commit a lot more time to strategic and tactical decision making as opposed to data compilation tasks. This will enable the organization to make the shift towards becoming agile. The transition will require extensive change management and training.
Business Intelligence can be a very powerful tool that will enable organizations to compete in a volatile and competitive marketplace but will have to closely integrate with the business processes to create an agile and successful organization.
