Submitted by Sarah Robertson on May 7, 2013 - 9:35am
Let’s start with the good news and the bad news which is there are more reasons and ways to automate Oil & Gas paperwork than ever before.
Like you, millions of mobile energy workers are turning to mobile technologies to help deal with increasing pressure to do more with fewer resources, maintain uptime, respond quickly to issues, and thoroughly document conditions and work status. Whether teams are servicing their own infrastructure or that of a customer, there is a strong focus on improving operational visibility so that issues can be identified and addressed before they become service, safety, or compliance concerns.
It’s no surprise that most mobile energy workers still document inspection, service requests, work orders, and time sheets by hand on paper forms. Writing on paper is simple and reliable for workers in a variety of environments and scenarios. Of course, in our increasingly connected and just-in time world, a key challenge is getting data off paper in a timely way so the information can be quickly integrated into corporate systems and workflows.
Extracting data from paper is a familiar struggle. Completed forms are usually driven, shipped or scanned and emailed back to the main office where they wait for manual data entry. Other processes and decisions also wait. Of course, the more manual the process, the higher the risk that documents get misplaced. This can lead to delayed decisions, unnecessary rework, and a variety of other risks like billing disputes or regulatory inspections.
For example, the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (H.R. 2845) doubles violation fines to $2 million. Even a loss rate of a 1/10th of one percent of documents can create serious risk when thousands of documents are collected in the field.
The growth in tablets, digital pens, hosted services, and character recognition options with scanners has created more automation options (and higher expectations) than ever. As is often the case, the larger the number of potential options, the more difficult it can be to make a choice and to create an overall strategy.
Mobility plans are difficult to create for a variety of reasons including issues around devices, platform choices, workflow coordination across multiple teams, IT priorities, staffing and training decisions, support and maintenance budgets, and much more.
Mobility projects can be complex with multiple points of potential failure. A recent survey estimated that mobile employees can lose 50-80 minutes of productivity on average when their devices fail and this productivity loss can total up to 41 percent of that device’s total cost of ownership (TCO).
My goal isn’t to paint an uninviting picture. It’s to let you know that you’re not alone, that many Oil & Gas industry leaders have preceded you in tackling mobile deployments, every mobile solution will be different, and to share best practices that will keep you on the right track for your team.
Next week, we’ll walk through the Top 3 Reasons to Automate Your Paperwork. Since automating field paperwork can offer a range of obvious benefits, asking yourself “why?” might seem like a no-brainer. But, it’s critical to think deeply about why you want to automate your workflows and the key benefits that you expect. Tune in!
