Force Inspections Pipelined Data by the Barrel into Its ERP; Turned to Citizen39 for Help Bringing Order to the Chaos
A downturn in Canada’s oil and gas industry some years ago caused the deep well of revenues that pipeline-testing company Force Inspections relied upon to begin running dry.
This led the Alberta-based outfit in 2019 to go drilling for new reserves of energizing income.
However, there was a problem. While Force Inspections possessed plenty of drill bits in the form of a massive trove of business data to aid the company’s attempts at bringing in a gusher, those implements were not nearly as sharp as they needed to be to deliver good results.
Rather than struggle using dull-edged data to core through the layers of questions regarding which strategic actions to take, Force Inspections opted instead to hone its business info with help from Paul Patterson of Citizen39.
“One of the strategies we adopted for countering the effects of the downturn was to develop more value-add services for the customers we had and for those sought to gain,” says Force Inspection’s Vice President of Corporate Development Matt Gruenenwald. “To do this, we first needed to approach data much differently than we had been doing up until that time.”
Cluttered Data Warehouse
The trove of business data belonging to Force Inspections did not always exist in electronic form. As recently as 2016, such data were routinely acquired and stored on paper. This included results from the company’s field inspections and nondestructive testing jobs.
“This was not particularly efficient, so we developed a customized ERP system into which results from inspections and testing were entered and warehoused,” Gruenenwald tells. “So, from that point forward, our people were able to use laptops and tablets to input inspection results, which then were synchronized with the main database.”
Gruenenwald says it did not take long before the data warehouse began filling up—and cluttering up. “Everything we collected through our inspections sat in the ERP database,” he explains. “Basically, it was straight-out raw data, no filters—a plethora of data that needed to be sorted.”
Because data were held in raw form, Force Inspections could not efficiently analyze them for purposes of spotting patterns and trends that would be beneficial for the company and its customers to timely know.
“For example, we could pull up data about an individual inspection, but we could not compare that inspection to others of a similar nature,” Gruenenwald recalls. “If we wanted to see how long a certain type of pipe was lasting based on maybe 500 samples, that would be something we couldn’t do—we had the raw data that could tell us about wear rates, but we did not have a way of filtering those data down into something usable. And by usable, I mean data that we could understand and make sense of.
“Everything was basically an Excel file that you needed to manipulate six ways from Sunday to get the data needed. This limitation became increasingly intolerable.”
Contacted Citizen39
Force Inspections reached out to Citzen39 in November 2019 and assigned it the task of putting the data warehouse into proper order.
After performing a comprehensive assessment of the situation, Patterson recommended shifting from on-premises data storage to a cloud service. He also suggested Force Inspections begin using a suite of Microsoft 365 tools, including BI Reports, to facilitate sharing of information internally and externally in highly customizable presentation formats.
“Paul focused on implementing remedial measures designed to filter out the noise so that we could easily access relevant data as needed,” says Gruenenwald. “He accomplished this by tying together our EMR and various other data-management systems and methodologies we had been using so that what we ended up with was something very valuable.”
Gruenenwald indicates he was impressed by the degree of expertise Patterson brought to the table.
“Paul thinks outside the box and he pushes people to look at data from a different point of view, which is extremely helpful,” he says. “Also, Paul is exceptionally knowledgeable—he lives and breathes data analysis. And I appreciated the way that he was always willing to go the extra mile, even when an issue or request fell outside the scope of the work he was hired for.”
Now Ahead of Rivals
Patterson completed his work within three months of being brought aboard, but Force Inspections kept discovering opportunities for him to develop additional capabilities. “We’re still utilizing Paul’s services; he’s been very helpful at every turn,” Gruenenwald shares.
Implementation of Patterson’s initial recommendations freed the company from that which had been holding it back.
“We are able to analyze pretty much everything now,” Gruenenwald enthuses. “The data are completely visible to our staff. We can look at our data and determine how much work in progress we had at any point in time, how big the backlog was or is, the size of our billings, the shape of our cash flow, what’s happening out in the field, how the various types and brands of pipe are performing, repair rates by market segment, revenue by market segment—and we can keep an eye on all this and more from a single dashboard.”
Force Inspections has two major rivals. Gruenenwald feels that Patterson’s efforts have handed the company a competitive edge over both.
“In terms of research powered by data analytics, we are far more advanced than either of those other organizations,” he says.
Most pivotally, Force Inspections now owns the means of drilling down fast and easy into the data it possesses when it comes to making strategic decisions, including those related to the search for additional sources of revenue.
“We are a better-performing company now that have tamed our data warehouse and put in place the tools to allow us to make excellent use of what’s in that warehouse,” says Gruenenwald. “I’m very glad we’ve had Paul’s assistance in bringing us to this good place.”