Retire That Whiteboard! There’s a Better Way to Track Oilfield Assets.

Where would the oilfield services industry be without the whiteboard? After all, whiteboards are used every day to keep track of the equipment and machinery that allows the industry to get the job done.

“You walk into so many oilfield service companies, and there it is on the wall,” says Jory Lamb, President and CEO of VistaVu Solutions. “The trouble is, most companies have no idea how much money that whiteboard is likely costing them in lost revenue and added expenses.”

It stands to reason that a manual method of record keeping can only be as accurate and timely as the information that’s put there. If the company’s people don’t know precisely where their equipment is, who has it, whether or not it’s being used and when it’s coming back, the whiteboard won’t know either. It’s also incapable of scaling itself bigger as a company’s equipment fleet grows. What do you do? Write smaller?

As Lamb sees it, the cherished whiteboard gives companies a false sense that their equipment is being tracked, when it isn’t. In fact, the lack of accurate, timely information on equipment leads directly to serious performance issues.

“The problem is asset underutilization,” says Lamb, “and in VistaVu’s experience, it’s one of the 10 Deadliest Sins of Oilfield Service Companies. It’s a sin because so many of us do it, even though we shouldn’t. It’s deadly because it has huge cost implications associated with it, and it erodes margins.

Lamb tells the story of one company he worked with, a firm that rented-out mud tanks. Very often, the company believed that it was fully booked. At any given time, however, several tanks were out in the field but not being used, or had been returned but not properly documented. Lamb calculated that the company’s $50 whiteboard was costing them more than $7,000 per year in added interest costs from stocking extra tanks to compensate for their inability to actually see what was happening with their equipment. Many companies not only lose revenue this way, but incur added costs by renting equipment they already have.

By looking to tools like oilfield services software, companies can achieve a higher level of asset control and optimize utilization.

“This is an asset-intensive industry and it’s imperative to know where all your assets are, and their status, at all times,” says Lamb. “There’s no doubt that people are very attached to their whiteboards. But when they see the gains in efficiency and profitability they achieve with SAP Business One and FieldVu, they get over it pretty quickly.”