We believe there is a better way to realize more cost efficiencies in the office and out in the field by helping all of our clients, regardless of size, build a solid foundation toward creating their own data legacy through our suite of Oilfield HUB services.

What’s the most frequently used tool in the field? Who supplies it? Depending on your vantage point in the oil and gas industry and your role within your company, many different ideas immediately spring to mind. What’s the tool? Excel spreadsheets! Supplied by our good friends over at Microsoft. Believe it or not, the patch runs on spreadsheets to a very large degree to help manage many different aspects of their operations, including lists of preferred vendors, daily field reporting and logging project costs. Do they work? Absolutely! Do they help build a database of historical information for future reference? Absolutely not!

Each of these spreadsheets, when combined together, act as the foundation for future decision making, particularly in this current environment of low commodity prices. How easily is this done, or is it done regularly at the present time? Not really! Building a legacy for your company is all about your data! Continuously gathering this data in one centralized location and mindlessly converting this data into valuable and meaningful information is all about making better business decisions. That’s the ticket. Knowledge is power, and your historical data is the driver!

So in the face of this kind of potential savings why are spreadsheets still so prevalent in the industry? They’re so damn cheap, accessible, and easy to use. And of course, they have been around forever. Compare that to the current list of alternative software and online services that are exponentially expensive in comparison. If you’re a well-healed intermediate or major, these solutions are within your grasp. But if you’re a micro-junior, junior or budding intermediate, these services are value priced well out of the reach of these companies. How do we change this imbalance? Well here at Leadstone we’ve got our sights aimed directly on the use of spreadsheets. We’re the spreadsheet killers! We believe there is a better way to realize more cost efficiencies in the office and out in the field by helping all of our clients, regardless of size, build a solid foundation toward creating their own data legacy through our suite of Oilfield HUB services.

Looking For A Few Good Men

But we’re not stopping there! We also have our sights set on, believe it or not, all of the non-productive time that is being wasted at the end of each and every order. Companies are constantly focused on reducing non-productive time in their field operations, but regularly or completely overlook the unproductive time being spent at end of order/ end of well, gathering, recording, verifying, disputing, reconciling, approving, and auditing invoices and related project costs.

Its mind blowing to see how much time is being spent and costs that are being incurred to easily and quickly close out an order for project related service, supply or rental. In this case, ‘easily and quickly’ are oxymorons! Aside from these soft costs, how about those avoidable duplicate bills, split bills and over charges that are being paid simply because of those nasty spreadsheets, and lack of thought nor inclination to find a quick and dirty way to make all of this extra effort and cost inefficiencies disappear. We’ve got the ticket, or should I say the truck ticket because it all starts there, but should never stop there.

Sound familiar? If it does, we certainly would like to hear from you. Better yet, we’re looking for, as the saying goes, ‘A Few Good Men’ (or Women of course) that want to put the pedal to the metal within their own company to come along for this ride with us. When times are good, we tend to make do with what we’ve always done, with tools like spreadsheets we’ve always used. But neither of these methods are game changers, or even incremental improvements. In order to save 10% to 30% on your operating costs,

existing processes and procedures have to change! Real change takes guts and perseverance. Yet the spoils of realizing greater cost efficiencies can’t be ignored these days. Are you our industry field cost champion? I hope so, give us a call.

Welcome Aboard

I would also like to welcome Ian Kane, from Kane and Associates, as our newest contributing editor to Oilfield PULSE. Ian has agreed to write a series of articles on vendor and supply chain management. His insights will certainly flush out the challenges and pain points the industry has endured for years and will help us educate our readers on how to wrestle many of the issues to the ground. Look forward to seeing his first article in our July issue of the PULSE.

Oilfield HUB Update

This month we are very excited about the launch of our new HUB Influencer program for the energy services companies using our Oilfield HUB service. We all know how difficult it is to get through the door to a new operator and even more challenging to leap onto their preferred vendor list. The HUB Influencer program contains a unique blend of integrated marketing and lead generation services for a select group of our VIP vendors who need to step up their game to more aggressively promote their flagship products/services with the Exploration & Production companies and EPCs/EPCMs that we are doing business in the HUB.

Kevin Turko
CEO
Leadstone Group
403.537.6561

Originally  published in the 

June 2015 issue of Oilfield PULSE