New Oil & Gas Benchmark Now Live
Exprodat, a Getech Group company has been measuring the petroleum industry’s geospatial performance since 2012. From GIS use cases to governance, spatial data management, skills and support, we so far have evaluated and compared the capabilities of about 50 oil and gas organisations.
Much has changed over the past five years, of course. The industry has gone through a painful adjustment to the ‘new normal’ of low oil prices. On the other hand, technology has continued to progress at an ever faster rate.
GIS is now a true platform that is transforming business workflows, improving productivity, providing insights, and reducing cost. This couldn’t have come at a better time for our industry, and now is the perfect time to re-evaluate your GIS.
A new online benchmark app
Following the old management adage, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”, we have launched a new benchmark app to help you progress your GIS operations to the next level.
It’s a free site that provides you with instant, personalised results, meaning you can quickly get a complete view of your organisation’s geospatial capabilities, strengths and development areas.
More importantly, it also enables you to compare your geospatial set-up against your peers and competitors in the petroleum industry (completely anonymously, of course).
In the past, benchmarking required a time-consuming questionnaire. Today we have reduced this to just a handful of carefully calibrated questions. It only takes a few minutes to complete – just give it a go!
Why benchmark your GIS capabilities?
There are many reasons why you should regularly benchmark your organisation’s geospatial capabilities:
- Identify your organisation’s best practices and development areas.
- Understand how you rate against industry peers and competitors.
- Help make the business case for GIS improvements and investments.
- Refresh your spatial strategy.
- Track progress over time.
- Measure the benefits of your investment in GIS.
The benchmark also helps us to collectively understand how we as an industry can raise our game for the benefit of stakeholders and society at large.
Benchmark results to date
Figure 1. Average GIS benchmark results for the Oil & Gas Industry across six key areas including GIS Governance, Use Cases, Spatial Data Management, Technology & Integration, Technical Support, Skills and Training.
To date we have measured the capabilities of circa 50 organisations using the full benchmark approach, often verified by an onsite audit. With the new, faster benchmark app we’re now hoping to grow this number dramatically. This will provide more data points not just in terms of organisations or geographical coverage, but also over time – helping us all to get a better sense of the pace of progress across the industry.
Globally, the scores currently average out at 2.6 on a scale of 1 to 5 in our GIS Maturity Matrix, although regional averages vary. To find out which region leads the world in geospatial maturity, check out our story map on ArcGIS Online.
Our results so far indicate that, on average, E&P companies are only slowly beginning to deploy GIS in a true ‘enterprise’ way, which is typically indicated by scores consistently above 3. Although a small number of operators have scored very highly in these benchmarks – indicating full enterprise deployment as a platform – the vast majority of organisations still struggle with data management, integration, skills and governance. Also, we have not been able to detect significant progress over time.
Two years ago we documented the state of GIS in the Petroleum industry in a comprehensive 25-page report (free download). We’re planning to update it once we have collected a new batch of data with the online benchmark.
So, how do you measure up? Take the test to find out!
http://www.exprodat.com/oil-gas-gis-benchmark/
Written by Thierry Gregorius, Principal Consultant, Exprodat.
