It appears that statistical models today are substituting factual business analysis in decision making. People are trying to predict all possible outcomes of their models with little control and/or understanding of the parameters that are impacting the quality and reliability of the result.
Over the last four years, oil and gas companies were focused on hiring data scientists, and Geoanalytics is often called to help. Yet, mathematical modeling of the physical processes is not a new concept.
One of the best Data Scientists I know is Geoscientist John Grace – the founder of www.earthsci.com, best known for GOM3 product, designed for the companies working in the Gulf of Mexico. He and his company are successfully managing through “digital transformation” for as long as I know them, and it is for over 15 years. The company power is in a perfect blend of in-depth knowledge of the Earth Sciences, statistics, optimal utilization of contemporary technology capabilities, and the ability to keep up with commercially-viable technology updates. Technology for John was, and is, merely a set of tools to deliver geoscience analysis most efficiently.
So, what is the role of geoanalytics? Is it a set of computer skills or the use of geoscience and math in business problem-solving?
I was not surprised to learn from the recent YouGov study that the meaning of the digital transformation is not clear to 54% of employees of the companies engaged in digitalization programs. Employees either don’t understand (20%) or misinterpret (34%) the meaning of digital transformation. McKinsey reports that more than 70% of digital initiatives are failing to reach their goals.
Also, we find that managers tend to leave the choice of highly specialized technologies for IT organizations. Digitalization of the work processes today went beyond the automation of the simple tasks in the supply chain and now harms the productivity of the companies creating a barrier between professional users and innovative - experienced service providers alike.
Internally, large organizations are struggling with the changes because they are trying to control them at the same time.
So, where are the opportunities for value delivery to the company shareholders? Social media and our email boxes are full of digitalization, IoT, and digital transformation promotions, but will these initiatives deliver the value to shareholders? What are the questions that we need to answer to deliver the most economical results? How should we deal with the competing working hypothesis for geologic models?
Recent studies show that brainstorming for questions rather than answers helps to overcome biases and progress into uncharted territory. We have a group of experienced oil and gas professionals who would like to host a series of virtual discussions on the topics of the most economic interest.
We will be scheduling our web seminars on U3Explore
