How Data Integration Consulting Helps the Oil & Gas Industry
You walked into the office that morning seeking answers about a problem in your lead field office. According to the project lead, some discrepancies about key extraction and distribution processes had arisen, but you didn’t have a clear picture of the issues because of muddled data. The information was there amidst the reports from various elements of your infrastructure and workflows, but you lacked the tools and high-level view to make sense of it all. It’s then you realized that your oil and gas company needed to invest in data integration consulting.
We want to help you understand why developing a data integration strategy will help your business improve overall. When you work with third-party experts to create a comprehensive picture of your data, you can make better and more timely decisions.
What is Data Integration?
Data integration is the process of collecting all relevant data from disparate sources across your company and presenting that information as a unified whole that can guide decision-making.
Think of it this way: Data can’t help you without the proper context and preparation. You need more than a bunch of random numbers. Your data requires guidance and clear direction before rendering valuable insights that can transform your company.
Thus, data integration offers the ability to see everything happening across the company but with a level of detail and specificity that helps you make informed choices.
Key Aspects of Data Integration
When it comes to making sense of the enterprise data your company generates, the standard data integration system follows this course of action.
- Collect the information
- Assemble it per your specifications
- Deliver it when requested
Information technology experts refer to this process as “Extract, Transform, Load” or ETL. The second step, Transform, remains the most important. Your company needs to provide key performance indicators (KPIs), macros, and other filters that tell the system how to produce the information you need. You must tell the data what you think is most important so it can render reports effectively.
How Can the Oil and Gas Industry Benefit from Data Integration Consulting?
With so much data available to your company at any given moment, the idea of streamlining how information is collected and processed might seem like a dream come true. But that dream soon becomes a nightmare when you realize that you don’t know how to do this work.
That’s why you should hire a data integration consultant who can help you with your data management needs. By harnessing your various data pipelines with that ETL process, they can ensure you receive the business intelligence you need to make sound decisions. Such enhancements to your data sources will deliver three distinct benefits to your overall workflows.
1. Efficient Consolidation
It all starts with gathering the information. Gone are the days when your analysts manually scrape every location where data might be generated and then load it into a series of databases and spreadsheets. Data integration professionals create coherent and seamless lines of communication that deliver the data into a single, unified location where it can then be parsed and investigated holistically.
2. Increased Quality
This point could also be called “reduced errors.” Your people do fantastic work for you, but they’re also humans, which means they can make mistakes. When you employ an integrated data approach that relies upon artificial intelligence and machine learning, you will experience fewer problems with your data. The better your information is, the better the decisions you can make.
3. Universal Access
Think of this as “enhanced collaboration.” When everyone at your company has access to the same information on the same terms, working together toward a common goal becomes more productive. Unified data removes the old silos between teams, projects, and worksites, which leads to greater transparency about what’s happening now and what should happen in the future.
Data Integration Consulting Provides Essential Expertise
Thorough data integration gives your oil and gas company access to critical information with clarity, intent, and purpose. However, you should place such a project in the hands of external consultants with industry experience because they operate without any institutional biases, and can investigate your systems, data sources, and processes to develop a solution that puts you on a path to success.
Are you tired of navigating your data to make heads or tails of what the business should do next? Then it’s time to talk to EAG Inc. today. We combine decades of oil and gas knowledge with advanced IT capabilities to deliver a data integration system/process that transforms your company for the better. Let us help you understand your information like never before.