Trends Shaping the Energy & Resources Industry

The latest trends in the energy & resources industry have had an undeniable impact, with both new entrants and established players taking advantage of the latest advances in technology to shape the future of their sector. But what are the biggest trends in the industry? Why are they important for organizations that want to retain and gain market share? And how can organizations turn them into a competitive advantage?

Modernization and Digitalization

For most energy & resources companies it is difficult to change existing ways of working and systems to grow their business in a safe and scalable way long-term without modernizing and digitalizing.

While modernization merely requires upgrading an organization’s technology, digitalization goes further, converting data and systems from analog to digital, connecting systems, customers, digitalized products and employees.

To realize the full potential of modernization and digitalization, energy & resources organizations are encouraged to rethink their current operating model, underlying business processes and customer interactions. Integrating data as part of a modernization and digitalization strategy results in improved operational efficiency, increased revenue and better cash flow, which can then be reinvested in the organization for further benefits.

Operational Efficiency

The basic goal of many organizations is to improve their operational efficiency, in other words, deliver quality goods to customers in the most cost-effective and timely manner possible. Achieving this incorporates resource utilization, production, distribution and inventory management.

When looking at operational efficiency through the lens of data, there are two important aspects: digitalization and optimization. Digitalization is essential in linear workflows where organizations need to gather data for compliance and reporting purposes. Optimization, however, is vital for typical daily operations. This means non-linear workflows with multiple possible scenarios that depend on different escalations. Here, data is used to simulate the scenarios beforehand to provide the workflow’s decision support system.

The highly manual and labor-intensive process in the agricultural sector typically generates a huge amount of printed paperwork as information is exchanged with the vessel owners, port authorities, government agencies and financial institutions. By digitalizing the post-trade execution process, the agriculture industry is transforming this outdated and inefficient process into a modern digital solution.

Data Virtualization and Leveraging Data for Insights

Data virtualization gives energy & resources organizations a means to generate insights from various enterprise systems and sources without the complexity of knowing or understanding where the data originates from. The organization can also leverage data from various sources to optimize workflows and create additional business value. While it is currently impossible to generate guaranteed predictions, accuracy is improving, which is helping organizations quickly evaluate the investment potential of different initiatives.

Many energy & resources organizations often have various disparate, siloed systems which make it difficult for them to generate meaningful insights about their business before they make company-wide decisions.

Asset Optimization

Investments in IoT provide organizations with new sources of useful data while algorithms provide the needed insights to reduce downtime, perform predictive maintenance, and increase operational efficiency.

Data Exchange and Collaboration

Organizations operate in ecosystems, exchanging data with their customers, suppliers and partners through a variety of interfaces. Mastering the art of data collaboration provides organizations with additional business value and meaningful experiences. Additionally, data exposed from these exchanges can be monetized to an extent, increasing company revenues.

Industry Platforms

Instead of staying within the borders of their own companies, some organizations in the energy & resources industry are coming together to solve problems that affect the entire sector. By transforming the industry as a whole, these initiatives are having an impact across the transport & logistics, trade finance, telecommunications, and commodities sectors.

Modern technologies, such as blockchain, provide security and data integrity that enable participating organizations to trust the data and processes on the industry platform.

Sustainability: An Additional Benefit

The technologies and approaches discussed above all use data to lower costs, increase revenue, and improve customer experiences. One additional benefit that is often overlooked is how data can help organizations work towards their sustainability goals, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As an organization’s operations become more efficient, the organization produces less pollution and fewer emissions, reducing its carbon footprint. However, it is difficult to calculate the exact improvement without data from across the organization’s entire value chain. Only by measuring and monitoring the situation using real-time data can an organization see the progress they have made.

Looking to the Future of the Energy & Resources Industry

As we have seen, data is at the heart of the technologies and approaches that organizations are using to optimize their business by lowering costs, monetizing data, creating business value, and providing compelling experiences to their customers, suppliers and partners.

Is your organization ready to benefit from leveraging data? Learn more about how data can play an important role in staying relevant and seizing business opportunities in the future.