Digitize your oil & gas operations with a cloud-based ERP

The oil and gas industry is a volatile one, highly susceptible to fluctuations due to a variety of factors beyond just commodity prices. Because of this, businesses in the industry need the ability to make fast decisions and adapt processes to meet a changing landscape. One of the many ways to keep your business agile is through flexible software that meets your changing needs. In recent years, oil and gas companies have begun the transition to digitizing operations and moving to cloud-based applications that offer more flexibility.

An ERP, or enterprise resource planning solution, is one of the biggest and most vital software solutions for a company. As such, choosing to implement a cloud-based ERP or switch over from an on-premise ERP can be a major decision. Whether you’re an oilfield services, oilfield machinery, oilfield drilling company or other player in the oil & gas industry, an ERP is a vital piece of software to manage your operations that connects with other functionality such an equipment rentals and field service ticketing.

Below are some of the benefits of choosing a cloud-based ERP for oil and gas companies that can help you move from manual spreadsheets to full digitization.

Complying with changing rules and regulations is a major headache for businesses, especially for oil and gas companies that operate in multiple regions all with their own regulations. For example, there were recently new lease accounting and revenue recognition rules implemented, requiring accounting and finance teams to change their business processes. An on-premise ERP typically issues less frequent updates, and if it’s a legacy ERP, there won’t be any updates at all. Either you’d have to pay a developer to make custom adjustments for your users to accommodate new regulations, if possible, or resort to manual spreadsheets to make the changes, which risks human errors. However, with a cloud-based system, there are often twice annual automatic updates that will help ensure your functionality stays up-to-date without customizations required. Cloud ERP solutions, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Orancle NetSuite, receive regular feature and capability updates that are automatically passed on to the user and can better handle these types of changes to accounting or tax rules.

The shift to remote work was already underway even before the pandemic forced a rapid acceleration of those plans. With a cloud-based ERP, all employees across your organization, not just field workers on licensed devices, will have the ability to work from anywhere with easy access to data. For whatever reason your team members might be in different locations, they need to be able to view and edit data, plus collaborate and communicate with the rest of their team. A cloud-based ERP is securely accessible through a web browser, enabling work from anywhere.

As companies evolve, they often purchase software as a need arises instead of looking holistically at their entire technology solution which can lead to data silos. When critical information about customers, orders, inventory, capacity, and more is spread across multiple solutions without integrations, aggregating it for analysis and decision-making is complicated and time-consuming. Also, it’s nearly impossible to get a complete picture of what’s happening in the business when data is siloed in each application or not fully connected to a single reporting solution. Cloud ERP solutions provide accurate, real-time data that helps teams collaborate more effectively. Additionally, cloud-based systems can be more integration-friendly, making it easier to integrate your ERP with the other systems your oil and gas business utilizes. Using real-time data, decision makers can make more informed decisions, leading to increased revenue, lower asset downtime, better field service technician productivity, and more.

One major benefit of implementing a cloud-based ERP system is cost savings from IT. With a cloud-based solution, your company does not bear the responsibility of hosting the software on a server or managing data. All of this is done for you and paid for with your monthly or annual subscription to the software based on a number of users, capacity, and storage. With traditional on-premise solutions, an in-house IT team is usually required to maintain the software and its servers. Although switching to a cloud-based ERP from an on-premise ERP that you own fully can be difficult, especially when you have to start paying monthly for the software, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is lower than paying for an IT team. Learn more about how cloud ERP helps organizations and lowers TCO in this whitepaper.

Is your oil and gas business ready to digitize and make the move to a cloud-based ERP? Rand Group is an experienced solution provider with over 20 years working with clients in the oil and gas industry. Our team of experts will engage with your team to identify ERP needs, select the best software, then implement a cloud-based solution to set your business up for long-term success. Contact us today to get started.