Making digital transformation a reality in the Energy Industry

Previously, Miguel Valdez shared insights on the Energy Transition and how the industry is moving forward. Continuing this discussion, he now approaches best practices to overcome digitalization failure and succeed in digital transformation.

The trough of disillusionment associated with digitalization efforts is real. But as we inevitably move forward, now is the time to take this technology and apply an enterprise wide implementation, creating a fundamentally new operating model and kickstarting a much-needed paradigm shift. How do we achieve that? How do we create success where similar initiatives have failed to live up to and meet expectations? Well, for starters, we must look at the true purpose of these initiatives and change the goals that we set for ourselves. We?ve done the same thing for years and years. Projects are run the same, the equipment is largely the same, the execution plan is repeated, etc. etc. etc. Often, digital initiatives fall under this category, run like a project. This is fundamentally wrong.

Best practice considerations 

In order for digital to truly succeed and for the industry to really change, there has to be a higher level of sharing, collaboration and coordination. These aren?t digital projects, these are evergreen, enterprise wide solutions. They can (and should) change the way your entire business operates, from finance to maintenance to operations, the data and technology exists to digitalize the work environment, ultimately creating a user focused way of working, bringing contextualized value not just to the business but directly to the hands of the individual users. From sensor technology to cloud solutions, we have to expand our ability to integrate, contextualize and operationalize our data. And the reason why is even more important.

3. Change is good

Another hurdle to overcome is simply perception. Change can be hard, and it?s often met with resistance due to a lack of understanding or fear. Roles will change, but that's not a bad thing.

We must be willing to break down some barriers, to take the things that are written in the walls and share them so that we can be confident we're always making the right and best decision, regardless of geographic location.We do that by engaging at every level from the start, in the development of our goals, our ambitions and the purpose behind them.

We seek and gain buy in from our teams with a commitment to work together and create the new working model based on the application of the selected digital solutions. There should be recognition that digitalization is not finite, but evergreen, always growing, and always scaling. Use case development and use case identification will happen almost daily when every level believes in the solution.