To create a legacy of change, companies need to overcome their legacy systems

These legacy systems typically operate in silos and often rely on on-premise servers rather than the cloud. Both scenarios are incredibly inhibiting to digitalisation changes needed to provide a holistic overview of resources and assets.

For oil and gas companies, there’s an apparent delay between initiating digital projects and seeing them through, with McKinsey research showing that 70 percent of such endeavours have not gone beyond the pilot phase. Much of the recent data on the sector comes from 2020, with 63 per cent of oil and gas executives then describing ‘the ability to change quickly enough’ as a major challenge. The pandemic has certainly prolonged this issue.

As companies look to tackle these issues, what exactly is blocking the pathway to change?

The blockers to progression

The very fact that many digital projects are not progressing beyond the pilot phase could signal either problems with the integration of technology or with organisational culture and operations. Rather than any technological issues, McKinsey pinpoints the three primary organisational blockers to project progression as: demonstrating clear value, employee uptake and skills, and siloed digital projects.

For the oil and gas sector these blockers can often be apparent. Legacy systems can be ingrained into many operations and the nature of measuring value can shift in line with meeting current production needs alongside evolving business goals. Instead, companies need to initiate projects that can deliver and quantify this value.

This involves migrating systems to a central cloud-based server to provide a unified overview of applications, leveraging external expertise (if needed) and upskilling employees in the process. With this implemented, these companies can then calculate current operational efficiency, highlight bottlenecks and set out tangible metrics for measuring project results and KPIs.

Inefficient and unused systems can also be counterproductive, with up to a quarter of data centre power consumed by equipment that no longer performs ‘useful work’. Likewise, integrating new digital systems in silos inhibits overall efficiency needed for sustainable power consumption. The more systems you have working independently, the less overview you have of your assets to make overall operations more efficient.

An effective digital transition is paramount to confronting these issues, and Industry 4.0 is ushering company operations into the world of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, AI and analytics.

Overcoming the legacy issue with external expertise

There are businesses that have acquired a host of bespoke developments and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software over the years. This accumulated range in systems can create an imbalance in the standards, functionality, efficiency and security of some of these products. It’s a recurring issue that Amdaris has observed over its 15 years developing software and systems in businesses — both within the oil and gas industry and elsewhere. Consequently, organisations are enlisting external software development teams to conduct the task of pivoting their legacy systems to a cloud-based, integrated structure.

This process, for instance, could involve carrying out a three-stage plan of stabilisation, optimisation and enhancement. The external team could provide immediate value with both current operations and any skills gaps by shadowing teams and conducting a research and discovery process to understand legacy applications. This approach means companies can take advantage of a smaller and cost-efficient group of experts who can spend time with end users, integrate COTS applications, and help to train employees and encourage uptake of any new systems.

Moreover, through mapping out an entire architecture of a company’s application suite onto the cloud, the team can eliminate any apps from the system not being regularly used to provide instant cost savings alongside enhancing automation with tools such as data input and report generation. The creation of this central database means that individual system maintenance is no longer required and focus can shift to enhancing applications to boost efficiency, reduce running costs through cloud optimisation, and, ultimately, drive innovation.

The pod approach

Some companies will already have applications in place or have recently completed a digital transformation process. What they need is someone to run their day-to-day operations and implement any upgrades as and when necessary. Yet a major operational risk — and perhaps a factor for projects falling at one of the first hurdles — is an over-reliance on an employee for software expertise. This is a short-term approach that places your dependency for these knowledge and skills on a tightrope: if that employee departs, it leaves a major skills gap and heightens operational risk.

A managed services provider alleviates this concern by providing a whole team of support. However, some of these providers can comprise thousands of support staff working across hundreds of clients — each with their own range of application suites — obstructing any means to develop expertise in a single system or identify any issues as they emerge. This can lead to a quick-fix mentality as opposed to implementing longerterm solutions.

Some solution providers, such as at Amdaris, approach managed services with a methodology that mitigates a reliance on an overstretched service. This is the ‘pod’ approach. Teams of dedicated support workers are built in ‘pods’, with each pod large enough to circumvent individual points of failure but also small enough to offer continual support. Any enhancements to applications and systems can be identified as the pods progress and familiarise themselves with a company’s applications.

Of course, each product — and each company — has its own set of requirements. The essence of outsourcing and the pod approach means that the pods are incredibly adaptable and able to respond to fluctuating business requirements; and as a company expands, so too can the size of the pod, helping to meet growing service needs and demand.

Gaining a real-time overview with APM

Through developing such a system architecture and support ecosystem, companies can then carry out improvements that add value: upgrades can be made with little operational interference and unscheduled outages can trigger automated alerts, even before the team is aware of issues. This ability to capture data and spot and predict issues is an example of asset performance management (APM) and it can be instrumental in transforming a company’s software strategy.

The process involves bringing technologies together to gather data across operations and store it in a database that is accessible across the organisation. Real-time tracking, for example, can empower companies to monitor energy consumption of appliances and ways to optimise power networks, while advancements in AI and predictive analytics can foresee infrastructure problems, including the potential for damaging leaks and spillages, by understanding patterns in data. Through this real-time understanding of infrastructure, companies can then optimise resources accordingly.

From managing supply chains to enhancing transport networks, having a central hub of data that gives decision makers an understanding of their physical assets is fundamental for optimising efficiency, productivity and sustainability. It empowers leaders to spot trends that would not have been possible to see otherwise and, as a result, to take the most appropriate and effective action. Oil and gas has to keep up and even forge ahead of these sectors. That process starts with overcoming its current legacy systems predicament.

Creating a legacy of change

With software skills and expertise increasingly hard to come by, and with resources and budgets also stretched by factors such as tech job losses and cost-of-living constraints, organisations are seeking other means of managing and developing their software applications. This is leading companies to engage with outsourcing options to build exceptional teams on limited resources and adopt agile processes.

But this is not simply a case of ‘working together’. At Amdaris we have found that through adopting a progressive delivery ethos, organisations can leverage extended software development teams that seamlessly integrate into their business, culture and operations. Through the pod approach, each team is bespoke and able to adapt to a company’s unique needs, collaborating as their ‘strategic partner’. And, finally, through investing in APM, companies can have the oversight to spot and predict issues before they happen, saving valuable time and reducing costs.

If the industry is to progress forward, maximising efficiency while enhancing access to data and system upgrades, then making the move from legacy systems to cloud-based technology will be fundamental to creating its own positive legacy of change.

About Amdaris

Established in 2009, Amdaris is your trusted partner for building high-velocity extended delivery teams. Working from our Bristol headquarters and Eastern European delivery centres, Amdaris acts as a flexible, strategic partner that supports, guides, and challenges our clients to lead from the front and stand out from their competition. With a Progressive Delivery Approach and a team of exceptional professionals, Amdaris works to make impossible challenges a reality by integrating with our clients’ business and culture to deliver game-changing solutions and take them to the next level. From consultancy to delivering expert software development teams, a partnership with Amdaris is about more than just ‘working together.’ We dream together, tackle obstacles together and, ultimately, we win together.