You've probably heard awesome stories of how truly great things can happen to people out of the blue; love when you least expect it, strangers paying for your coffee... The list goes on and on forever about how small, unexpected people and the actions they sometimes take can bring us light, love and unmeasurable positive impact to our lives.

Machines however, are not out to sweep us off our feet, cheer us up, or have any desire to pass along some sunny moments into our lives. No, they're famous for breaking down when we need them the most. Sometimes, it almost feels like maybe they even conspire together and to all have different (and very time consuming) breakdowns all within days, even hours of each other to cause total havoc on our work, and lives. The surprises machines can deliver don't exactly give anyone the warm fuzzies.

In the past few years, as oil and gas prices began to drop and investment capital dried up, ‘business-as-usual’ models began to die a painful death for those companies that did not have a targeted digital transformation goal, or (at least) a strong eye on the prize with an actionable plan already in place.

The digital transformation journey can look very different for each company depending on what (if anything) you already have in place; but there are some pretty easy; highly effective and easy wins you can score right out of the gate.

Thankfully, technology is evolving in giant leaps and bounds today. It's a great time to be alive and witness the new advancements every day. But with all the change it can also leave some producers and operations wondering when the right time is to replace the old with the new really is; given that some tech is only 'new' for a week or two, and then will be quickly outdated by something bigger, better, faster, smarter and will have more shelf life.

When producers invest in new technologies for their business, they can expect more profits, more production, and more sustainability but deciding when to purchase tech, and which tech to invest into that won't be outdated in a year (or these days a week), makes it more of a challenge to get right. And then of course, it comes down to what to upgrade, and as with everything in life; it comes down to 'how to leverage all that new tech'. Will the 'how' be so complicated it will eat away your team's time or quickly add value that contributes to fast gains?

The daunting task of keeping track of your expenses can be time-consuming and overwhelming if not managed correctly and efficiently. With the right software and automation in place along with mobile apps and other productivity tools, managing expenses has gotten easier.

For oil and gas, managing lease operating expenses (LOE) has gotten easier with automation and software solutions. Now, there are fewer reasons not to have the costs eat away at your companies’ ability to operate wells and keep costs within budget without having to shut-in operations.

Have you read about the advance of self-driving cars? With an array of sensors “seeing” obstacles, speed limit signs and other vehicles, tracking the speed, noting highway conditions such as rain or sleet, and using maps and tracking to plan the route, self-driving vehicles are approaching us in their own fast lane.

You may not be surprised to find that we have the same dreams for a self-operating oil field.

Now there will still be the need for repairs of worn-out equipment, damaged well-bores, and to perform PMs such as oil changes. There’s the need to do that for vehicles as well. The autonomous oil change is not here yet, but even that might be in line for cars someday.

How often have you worked on a written assignment only to have an unexpected computer failure, and you lose all your information because it did not save? Once this happens, you either look for other ways to recover your work or get stuck starting from the beginning.  

When the unexpected happens, you want to pick up where you left off, especially when it comes to business operations. For this reason, it is essential to implement a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and have the appropriate technology to support services in the event of unforeseen circumstances.

Most people working today tend to work not only when we're at work, but also when we're at the movies, car wash or grocery store; we respond to emails and texts all hours of the day and night. Work-life balance is there, but it's also much more of a work-life blend today than ever before.

This blend is why you need your files and data to all be easily visible from top to bottom without relying on portable devices or clunky, undependable drives that should have been replaced years ago or, worst of all; boxes of paper files (I'm cringing at the thought of that one)!

Do-it-yourself field automation sounds great until you realize all the mind-bending decisions involved. I think of this when I go to a favorite restaurant; a fast-casual place where you line up in front of a massive menu board loaded with salads, sandwiches, soups, potatoes, sides of all sorts, and pretty much any other causal type of food you could possibly want or crave, but I have to say their menu is pretty huge.

It’s obvious whenever the person in front of me is a first-timer. Eyes wide, hands shaking, and lips moving without a sound. I can't help but wonder if they're okay or getting ready to have a meltdown from menu overload. Only because I felt that way on my first couple of visits.

After you absorb all that content it's easy to see the big picture and navigating their giant menu is meant to be more of an opportunity to get pretty much anything you may want, not the overwhelming first-timer experience I often witness.

The basic formula for increasing oil well production is pretty clear to me: the more the pump runs, the more oil it pumps. The real issue is how to reduce downtime, so that it runs more, and pumps more.

What wasn't clear to me is why on earth about 100,000 pumpjacks in the US alone are not monitored, other than by someone driving all the way out to the well site every couple of days. With that method, a pump may have been down, or even worse leaking for a day or so before it’s noticed by anyone. That’s several hours of production time that can never be recovered.