The implementation of the technologies that makeup the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification have a unique and one of a kind characteristic. One that I don’t think has been evident in any technology implementation in oil and gas before. And that is that they are being implemented by people who are actively participating in markets. This one characteristic will make the implementation successful and have the effect of making the transition to the
Preliminary Specification easier than would otherwise be envisioned. Normally an implementation is driven by a project manager with a list of tasks. Here in People, Ideas & Objects case there are markets driving the stakeholders.
Consider that we have four particular stakeholder groups that are motivated to have these changes occur as quickly as possible. The first is the producers themselves, the second the oil and gas investor, the third is the user community and the final being the service providers. In each case there is a financial reward involved in the implementation. From each of these groups perspectives, the following would be the case.
From the oil and gas producers point of view the scope of their operations would be reduced to a highly focused earth science and engineering capable producer. Able to deal with their two competitive advantages of their land and asset base, and their earth science and engineering capabilities. And forget about the demands of building royalty and compliance accounting infrastructure, or the need to acquire more floor space for administration. The ability to lean out in the administrative and accounting areas to focus on the sciences, and to focus on their chosen specialization would orient them to what it is that makes them commercially relevant in the marketplace. A simpler domain in a world where the oil and gas producer has become too complex and too multi disciplined to be able to be agile and compete in the fast changing energy marketplace.
The producers are motivated to offload as much of the administration and overhead to the service providers as quickly as they possibly can. We certainly have to take into account a few difficult battles with the bureaucracy along the way but the pace will be quick. Moving to a small footprint will become a business model that appeals to the “mindset” of the marketplace and become the “thing to do.” This can’t happen fast enough as far as the CEO’s and like minded people within the organization are concerned. And once it begins, there is no turning back.
For the energy investor they can look forward to greater profits as a result of the
decentralized production model delivering these through higher natural gas prices. Producers will be able to impose production discipline and enable the pricing to find its equilibrium and remain profitable for the foreseeable future. Providing a healthy and secure environment for the investment community to invest in oil and gas will help the industry to grow and compete with other industries on basic financial criteria. This will add to the pressure on the producer to make the changes to the service providers as quickly as can be done. The expectation and reality of this change will require significant communications as there were $170 billion in opportunity costs for 2012 and 2013 alone.
Users have been discussed in terms of their importance to systems development before. And in some systems we see the user input in substantial ways. Systems such as Google and Apple are very much oriented based on the user. When it comes to ERP systems the user is a bit of an anomaly. Systems such as SAP know they exist but don’t accommodate them in their prepackaged world. That is changing in People, Ideas & Objects
Preliminary Specification as we take an approach that is user driven in terms of how our systems are developed. First of all the user community is paid for their contributions. Our rate is $185 U.S. per hour and we do not employ any users on our payroll. They are all service providers, employees of producers, service industry representatives or those that have a need within the oil and gas industry for better systems. The point is you could make a living being a user and become specialized in the discipline. Or you could be very specialized in your area of expertise and relate that to the developers so that the systems captured that special knowledge and understanding. Either way People, Ideas & Objects are open to the contributions of the user community and we have budgeted $667 million in the development of the Preliminary Specification to capture those user community contributions. Fully 2,000 man years of contributions.
Lastly there are the service providers who might I think double as users in many cases. Their job is going to be the most interesting and the most difficult. They will have to be the movers and shakers that make this bit of magic work to everyone's satisfaction. They’ll be needing to catch the people and tasks that are being offloaded from the producer firms and working with the user community to define the software to manage the processes they specialize on, on behalf of the industry. Their ability to turn the producers administrative and accounting capabilities into an industry wide administrative and accounting capability in as short a time as possible will be the expectation. They will also need to use specialization and the division of labor in defining their processes to optimize the oil and gas industries processes. Billions of dollars depends on it being done quickly and efficiently. The key bottleneck is having the People, Ideas & Objects developers in place to develop the software necessary for these people. And that is why we are looking for the resources in the fashion that we are. The more the industry participates in this project the more successful it will be. There are not just billions of dollars on the line for these stakeholders, there are billions on the line for the service providers as well. The gross G&A that is spent in the oil and gas industry. And that would be subject to the administrative and accounting changes that we are talking about here. Would total in the tens of billions of dollars on a North American basis. So the task that these people undertake would be large, but the businesses they would be establishing, and most of them would be new businesses, would be substantial new businesses.
To start this game of musical chairs requires the $2 to 4 billion needed for the software developments. With so many people motivated in the success of this implementation I truly do feel sorry for the bureaucracy. But it’ll be time for them to go.
The
Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas producer with the most
profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects
Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me
here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter
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