Public Drilling Contractor Drills Down into a Scalable Platform that Helps Improve Efficiency

Transcription

1 Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Solution Case Study Public Drilling Contractor Drills Down into a Scalable Platform that Helps Improve Efficiency Overview Country: Canada Industry: Oil and Gas Customer Profile Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust is a growth-oriented income trust that contracts rigs to North American oil and gas companies. It operates close to 70 rigs and employs approximately 1,500 skilled staff across Canada. Business Situation Trinidad needed a business management system that would improve the financial and operational efficiency of its business processes and keep pace with its rapid growth. Solution With the help of Microsoft Certified Gold Partner Open Door Technology, Trinidad customized Microsoft Business Solutions Navision software, enabling it to add new companies without increasing human resources. Benefits Reliable platform for growth Greater operational efficiencies Tailored to business needs Real-time visibility Integrates with existing software Open Door took us through a quick demo of Microsoft Navision, and showed us how they could customize the software to process the analysis we required for our business. At that point it was clear Microsoft Business Solutions would be able to produce the results we needed. Scott Hennenfent, Corporate Controller, Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust Fund Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust is a growth-oriented income trust that has built a successful business contracting rigs to North American oil and gas companies. Headquartered in Calgary, the company operates close to 70 rigs and employs approximately 1,500 skilled staff across Canada and the U.S. Trinidad needed a fully integrated business management solution that would improve the efficiency of its accounting processes and keep pace with its rapid growth. Trinidad had acquired a number of companies running disparate IT systems, and wanted to consolidate on a common platform. The diversity of oilfield requirements called for a flexible system that could be adapted to fit a number of unique and complex situations. With the help of Microsoft Certified Gold Partner Open Door Technology, Trinidad customized Microsoft Business Solutions Navision, now part of Microsoft Dynamics, software to help the company add new acquisitions with minimum effort and resources. Now, Trinidad has a common platform that provides better insight into day-to-day operations and financial data. By moving all its financial and payroll operations to Microsoft Navision, Trinidad has a consolidated, integrated business management system that provides a reliable platform for growth. The solution has helped the company improve its financial management, payroll processing and reporting, while enabling greater visibility into day-to-day operations.

2 Situation These are booming times for the petroleum industry, and Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust is riding this wave of growth. The growth-oriented income trust has built a successful business contracting rigs to North American oil and gas companies. Headquartered in Calgary, the company operates close to 70 rigs and employs approximately 1,500 skilled staff across Canada and the U.S. Trinidad needed a fully integrated business management solution that would improve the efficiency of its accounting processes and keep pace with its rapid growth. It had acquired a number of companies, resulting in a patchwork of disparate IT systems that was expensive to maintain. Since its various systems were not connected, the company lacked a holistic view of its operations. We were using an AS/400 system that could best be described as a black hole as far as data was concerned. Information went in, and only came out with extreme difficulty. It was basic accounting software that didn t provide any management information, says Scott Hennenfent, Corporate Controller, Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust. We also used a DOS-based system, and neither of these systems could talk to one another. We wanted to consolidate everything on a Microsoft-based platform for easier data access. The most immediate requirement was to design an application that could import data from a third-party rig management solution, and automatically generate payroll and invoicing data. The company s existing accounting systems left it open to multiple data-entry points, causing frequent delays in invoicing and running payrolls because of the time and effort required to check data accuracy. By connecting the two systems Trinidad gained greater visibility into day to day operations. Specifically, management was able to effectively analyze operating costs, by day, by rig and view the revenue. Trinidad had to develop daily reports in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software on items such as drilling days, the cost of contracts, profit margin and the profitability for each rig. With its hodgepodge system, the process was cumbersome and inefficient employees could not upload or import the required information into Microsoft Excel from Trinidad s accounting systems. Employees had to manually enter the same information into different systems, delaying the timelines of the reporting. Trinidad was looking to streamline data entry. The company had multiple systems, and employees were inputting data multiple times. By collecting data in a central repository, Trinidad was able to eliminate the cumbersome task of entering information numerous times, says Brad Pawlak, Business Development, Open Door Technology. As well, rigorous industry standards and legislation around health and safety compelled Trinidad to find a more efficient way to accurately track statistics. All drilling companies must report their safety numbers to the Canadian Association of Drilling Contractors and, more importantly, to their customers. Trinidad is awarded business because of our safe operations. All customers will ask for a company s safety statistics before taking on a rig, says Hennenfent. We were able to modify Microsoft Navision to effectively track and report on our safety statistics. Trinidad had to watch for errors and find ways to reduce downtime, says Pawlak.

3 Trinidad required a system that would be scalable enough to confirm these requirements without holding up the process. No application had been built to handle this task. These problems had to be resolved before Trinidad could continue growing, especially as the company absorbed new employees and systems through acquisitions. Solution Trinidad looked at several solutions, but felt they were better-suited to the manufacturing and distribution industries. Instead, Trinidad selected Microsoft Business Solutions Navision software as a common platform for its operations management and accounting processes. The company turned to Microsoft Certified Gold Partner Open Door Technology to lead the deployment. Open Door took us through a quick demo of Microsoft Navision and showed us how they could customize the software to process the analysis we required for our business, says Hennenfent. At that point it was clear Microsoft Business Solutions would be able to produce the results we needed. While the rollout of Microsoft Navision was still underway, Trinidad purchased Bear Drilling Ltd., a company that had no existing accounting system. Open Door was able to get the acquisition up and running on the system within a month s time a significant accomplishment in light of the company s complex payroll requirements. Normally, we would sit down with the client and conduct a business review, detail the requirements, outline the specifications and then start to implement the solution. However, we had to pilot the system at Bear Drilling within an incredibly short timeframe because the new company did not have an accounting system, says Pawlak. We were able to get Microsoft Navision up and running at Bear Drilling and get financial statements from the system within a few weeks of installation. The Microsoft Navision solution provides Trinidad with a fully integrated business management system that covers financials, payroll, complex invoicing processes, field ticketing, asset utilization and functionality to manage safety statistics. The system uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000, part of the Windows Server System integrated server software, as its data store. Trinidad employees access the software solution from PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system. Benefits By moving all its financial operations to Microsoft Navision, Trinidad has a consolidated, integrated business management system that provides a reliable platform for growth. The solution has helped the company improve its financial management and reporting, while enabling greater visibility into day-to-day operations. Increased operational efficiencies and a reliable platform for growth The scalability of Microsoft Navision allows Trinidad to acquire companies in other lines of business without having to re-implement a new financial or payroll system. As well, Open Door customized Microsoft Navision to meet Trinidad s unique requirements, enabling the company to easily add new acquisitions without making significant increases to human resources or payroll employees. Unlike other standalone products that only feature import/export functionality between the systems, Microsoft Navision seamlessly connects core business areas such as field ticket sheets, invoicing, fixed assets, jobs,

4 financials and payroll. By having an integrated solution, Trinidad has experienced significant improvements in workflow management. With its previous software, administration staff had to manually enter the same invoice, payroll and fixed asset information at different points in the system, which was time consuming. Microsoft Business Solutions Navision automatically enters acquisition information electronically, saving the administration staff many hours in duplicate entry. Data processing is no longer held up by issues flagged by the system. Microsoft Navision allows staff to revisit issues at a later time, allowing workers to speed the processing ahead. Connecting core business areas not only helps to streamline business processes but also has a direct impact on Trinidad s bottom line. Since deploying, Trinidad has quadrupled the number of rigs with few additions to administration staff. I believe if we hadn t gone with Microsoft Navision, we would have had to hire twice as many people to keep up with the information and the changes we ve gone through, says Hennenfent. In the last two years we ve purchased six different companies, and Microsoft Navision has enabled us to keep pace with all our new acquisitions. You couldn t put a dollar amount on that type of value. Increased cash flow Deploying Microsoft Business Solutions has helped Trinidad automate its data import process, replacing multiple points of entry with a single window. The highly integrated environment immediately improved invoice accuracy and reduced time to bill, which resulted in faster payment by customers and increased cash flow. As a public company, we really have to show financial results within the first 45 days of the quarter end. Under the old system, there was no way we would be able to provide accurate information fast enough considering our growth, says Hennenfent. With Microsoft Navision, we re able to complete financial statements very quickly with confidence that the numbers are accurate. Seamless integration with existing technologies Microsoft Navision uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as its data store, which allows the system to integrate with any number of thirdparty products. This enables Trinidad employees to reliably exchange information with other systems or applications. Microsoft Navision also shares the familiar interface of the Microsoft Office System, which allows Trinidad employees to draw on the functionality of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. When we switched to Microsoft Navision, we loved that Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Navision all worked together seamlessly and came from one vendor, says Hennenfent. We can also trust that Microsoft will be investing in this technology and driving the application forward. Timely access to information With Microsoft Business Solutions, Trinidad s employees can electronically pull the required data to Excel directly from the Microsoft Navision system through a third-party solution, which allows for easy analysis of business critical information. Staff can now devote less time to inputting the information and more time to analyzing it, giving the company a clearer view of its operations. The biggest benefit we have is that Microsoft Navision provides consistent, accurate information we can analyze, says Hennenfent. Microsoft Navision lets us

5 For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) in the United States or (905) in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: For more information about Open Door Technology products and services, call or visit the Web site at: For more information about Trinidad Energy Services Income Trust products and services, call or visit the Web site at: revisit the numbers and filter different fields so that we catch items missed in the billing process. We would never have been able to do that in the old system. A Look Ahead In the future, Open Door will be able to add important applications to address critical industry requirements, such as regularly scheduled preventative maintenance for fixed assets, within the solution. Trinidad s customized Microsoft Business Solutions implementation is now capable of taking imported drilling information and automatically updating the fixed asset system to track required maintenance, based on either elapsed time or usage. Microsoft Business Solutions Microsoft Business Solutions offers integrated business applications and services that allow small and mid-sized organizations and divisions of large enterprises to connect employees, customers, and suppliers for improved efficiency. The financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and analytics applications work with Microsoft products such as Microsoft Office and Windows to streamline processes across an entire organization, giving businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft Business Solutions are delivered through a worldwide network of channel partners that provide specialized services and local support tailored to a company s needs. For more information about Microsoft Business Solutions, go to: Software and Services Products Office Excel 2003 SQL Server 2000 Windows Server 2003 Windows XP Solutions Microsoft Business Solutions Navision Partners Open Door Technology 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Example: Active Directory, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published December, 2005