A major international oil company operates in every aspect of the industry, from exploration and refinement to retail sales. Each of its business units faces unique challenges, exacerbated by an intense period of mergers and acquisitions that left the company with a complex information architecture and competing data standards.
Communication across business lines is crucial in this highly competitive industry, but each business unit also has its own unique needs for the data. The company knew that it needed a solution that could simultaneously meet both of these needs, so the staff decided to look at an enterprisewide data integration and data quality management solution.
The company faced several unique challenges. The company’s pipeline operations were accountable to strict regulations mandating that it routinely provide the federal government with detailed and accurate information on pipeline location, maintenance and repair. Inaccurate or incomplete information could lead to substantial fines for non-compliance.
At the same time, the company’s billing operations were struggling with maintaining multiple databases containing conflicting and constantly changing customer information. Reconciling these databases to provide a single view of the customer was recognized as a top priority for the company.
This oil and gas company was also preparing to launch a large-scale data migration to a single instance of SAP – a project that was expected to be monumentally cost- and labor-intensive. The company found a single data quality and data integration solution for each of these efforts – regulatory compliance, billing controls and SAP migration – through DataFlux technology.
With DataFlux technology, the company was able to launch an enterprisewide data quality initiative. The initiative introduced data quality as an integral part of day-to-day operations across the company’s different business segments across the globe.
Furthermore, the company maintained consistent, accurate and reliable data within its SAP environment with DataFlux technology. The same rules used to load data into SAP could also govern the quality of incoming data in real time.
With DataFlux technology, the company has seen substantial improvements in the quality of its data, freeing resources for more profitable exercises. The pipeline operation drastically reduced the amount of fines paid to government agencies due to incomplete or inaccurate information. With more accurate customer information, billing operations significantly improved their timelines. And an SAP migration scheduled to take 36 months took only 18.
Impressed with the results, the firm created a Data Quality Center of Excellence that offers support services for data quality management enterprisewide. The company plans to expand its data quality management initiatives and has chosen to continue to rely on DataFlux technology to drive these improvements.