If this writer’s personal experience is a common one, then the low-key dread of buying new boots, be they for the mountain trail or the industrial site, may sound familiar. New boots will bring protection and grip, certainly, but not without the initial blisters and pain of breaking them in.
Now imagine that the boots chosen fit like a proverbial glove: they are snug, but not tight. There are no hotspots, and initial trial steps don’t highlight one contact point over anyother. From day one, they feel as though they’d been cobbled for your feet and no one else’s. Nice, right?
Now imagine it’s not a boot, but a product designed to reduce inefficiency and increase productivity at every turn. Then a prominent figure in the Texan Oil and Gas industry turns around and says, “It’s like Shepherd was made for the Oil and Gas industry”. That’s a pretty strong endorsement, and a sure sign you’re doing something right.
Why so perfect for Oil and Gas?
So why is Shepherd’s NetSuite-native EAM so well-suited to this industry? Two main reasons stand out, and the fact that they match up perfectly.
The first is that Shepherd excels at helping companies reliant on assets to generate their revenue to manage those assets effectively. Managing assets will mean keeping them running; it will mean doing as much maintenance as needed for that to happen, but no more than that. It will mean knowing what equipment provides the best value in terms of its cost, upkeep, resale (if any), and service life duration. It will involve effectively managing the people who take care of the maintenance and operation of that equipment, since that, too, is a cost involved.
The second is that the Oil and Gas industry runs on huge upfront costs, justified by vast long-term returns. Those huge upfront costs only grow when stuff stops working. Estimates drawn from researching this blog suggest that a drilling operation where the rig is down for 24 hours, the losses through inactivity, together with standby and other costs associated with the spread, can happily reach meaty 5-figure sums. Not to mention the additional delay to when the rig can start pumping, and the oil revenues that one day represent.
Wide-angle oversight, or zoom in on the details
In that context, the alignment between service and sector is clear to see. Configured to a given customer’s needs, every asset a company has, every spare part it needs, every service interval it requires is in the system. And that system monitors operations to ensure that each piece of tech is tracked in terms of what it costs to run. It registers each part that is replaced, how often, and at what cost, and ensures that the correct people are informed when more is needed. Not an excess, but what is needed, so the next time something is needed, there is enough.
The maintenance technicians and those responsible for them are also covered by Shepherd’s solution, with systems making it so easy for those in the field to keep those at the base informed of every change as it happens. And where no signal is available, the updates go through the second it is reestablished. Being a potentially hazardous job, Shepherd also allows for safety protocols to be built into the technician interface, meaning they are safer from harm, and the company has the paper trail any audit or dispute might require.
NetSuite-Native intelligence for SMEs
As mentioned before, Shepherd is NetSuite-native, meaning it is designed to talk the same language. NetSuite is an ERP designed for SME’s, so it’s not a likely candidate for the likes of ExxonMobil or Shell, but there are plenty of smaller, independent outfits that could certainly benefit from the budgetary oversight NetSuite provides, potentiated by the asset-savviness of Shepherd. Add to that the power of Shepherd’s BI tool that draws straight from NetSuite’s General Ledger (see why being native is good?), and the potential should start to really shine.
If you are in Oil and Gas, and want to see what a system so well-suited to your needs looks like, book a demo to find out more.
