We’ve been innovating in the automation arena for decades. Still, recently, 
we realized that we had several departments working on this separately—and that we could benefit from pooling our efforts and getting an even bigger picture of the possibilities.
So, we asked ourselves this critical question “What should we be doing to innovate on a larger scale to help our oil and gas production customers become even more efficient?”
Working together to become proactive
Instead of focusing on making improvements based on the input of individual clients—which is a great thing that we always have done—we wanted to also ask, “What has the product team doing? What is the development team doing? What are the executives looking at? How can we all work together to be more proactive and to move even faster at anticipating not only the needs, but the possibilities of developing even better solutions?”
With new, more-detailed hardware coming out regularly and with computers and software improving at rates that leave Moore’s Law gasping for breath, we can capture and analyze data in ways that were impossible just a few months ago. In addition to taking input from the field, we want to give feedback, with our heads in the cloud, so we can provide customers with even more and better data and analytics they can use—that they never dreamed would exist.
Our goal in this give-and-take is to improve our conversation with our customers, where we discuss their needs and possibilities, so they’re more productive and profitable in a rapidly changing economic environment where every dollar seems to count double, or even triple what it once did.
Improving communication and collaborations among departments
Our User Experience team is always working to improve communication and collaboration among various departments in the organization, to enhance our relationships with our customers through two-way conversations, and to build user research and interaction and visual design competency within the organization.
In the process of maximizing the process, we’re going to go tear things down to the roots. Instead of starting with “what we’ve always done” and automating that process—which is indeed some progress—what we want to do is to ask instead, “What is the very most efficient workflow here, regardless of what used to be done with paper forms?” and let automation accomplish even more efficiencies by doing what only it can do.
The highest and best use of computers will always be to make humans more efficient, to relieve them of details and repetition so that those humans can use that data for better decisions—both immediate and long-term while delivering the promise of more time to focus on core business.
So, while our heads are certainly going to remain in the cloud with extreme focus on developing the very best possible solutions for oil and gas producers, you gain the benefit of added time to focus on your core business and increasing your production, profits and sustainability.
