Selecting the right technology to improve business performance

11-11-2020
tech selection

The number of technologies that are available on the market is overwhelming, and new technologies become available every single day. Selecting the right technology for your business may seem like finding a needle in the haystack! In this blog, we share some insights on how you can address this challenge, no matter how large or small your company is.

Learning from daily life – selecting shares to invest in

As you may have noticed from previous blogs, we like to give examples from daily life. Let’s start this blog with an example that was recently shared by a friend of mine. This friend likes to invest in shares; but was not happy with the cost and service of traditional companies and banks to help him with picking the right companies to invest in. He however found a site that helps by offering the possibility to copy the choices of successful investors. A very simple but impactful idea: replicate the best practices of others!

There is a parallel between this example and how technology selection can be done…

Selecting technology – in case of a small Operator

Small Operators typically don’t need to be at the forefront of technology. And in most cases, small Operators simply don’t have the resources to do an extensive screening of potential solutions that are available on the marketplace. But this doesn’t mean that you need to stick to conventional practices! Replicating technology that has worked for others can deliver significant value to you; we speak from experience when we make that statement. For small Operators, it particularly makes sense to replicate what has worked for others in the same geographical region. For example, for Oil & Gas Operators in the UK, the quickest ways to make an impact with technology is to replicate what has worked for other UK Operators, or technology that has delivered value elsewhere in the North Sea.

Selecting technology - in case of a large Operator

For a large company, such approach can work as well, at least to a large extent. Even for the largest and most innovative companies that we know of in the Energy industry, it is in most cases good enough to replicate what has worked for others. This doesn’t mean that there is no need for bringing in new technology, but it is important to keep a healthy portfolio of novel and proven technology. To make the comparison once more with investing in shares: people are often willing to have some risky shares in the portfolio (with potentially very large returns), provided they are part of a portfolio of shares whereby the chances of a good return are higher.

But there are also other aspects that play a role. As a large Operator, you are an attractive target for suppliers, and you will therefore get ‘bombarded’ by requests for meetings from suppliers who want to talk to you about technology, something which can potentially take a lot of time. And for large Operators, it will very quickly become very difficult to know who has talked to which supplier within your company; knowledge sharing within large corporations is very challenging. Fortunately, there are ways on how these challenges can be tackled.

Selecting technologies using TechnologyCatalogue.com

During the years that my business partner and I were leading technology deployment activities in Shell, we wondered why there wasn’t a platform like TripAdvisor or Booking.com, but then for Technology. This led to the launch of TechnologyCatalogue.com in 2018. The platform allows you to select technologies based on reviews and technology deployment track record. Suppliers can add their technologies for free, and individual users have free access.

The free version of TechnologyCatalogue.com aids the decision-making process. It also helps you to manage suppliers that approach you in an effective way. With the platform, you can essentially advise suppliers to first show credible reviews and references on the platform before you meet with them. All on the basis that if multiple recognized experts find something a good idea, then it likely IS a good idea. Or at least something to have a look at. And if multiple companies similar to your company have deployed a technology, then it may also be an opportunity for you. Or at least something to consider!

Besides the global version of TechnologyCatalogue. com, we also offer platforms targeting specific groups. One example is the recently launched UK Energy Technology Platform.

Besides the free versions of TechnologyCatalogue.com, we offer premium services. With these services, further insights are made available to further support the technology selection process and improve decision quality. We offer the following.
 

  • Based on your specific business needs, we can send you a monthly email highlighting technology addition on TechnologyCatalogue.com that can address your needs.  Your business needs will not be disclosed to any other party. The email will be in a format that can be easily shared with people within your organization.
     

  • We can support you with our Online Workshop: Technology Deployment: How to Get it Done and Maximize Outcomes! This 4-hour workshop gives you a good understanding of critical success factors for technology deployment, given the business environment in which you operate. This way you maximize the chances that selected technologies are picked up by the business.
     

  • We can support you with building a technology plan. A typical approach that we use:

    • Based on your business needs, we prepare a list of 30-50 technologies that can potentially be of interest.

    • This is followed by a number of working sessions to rank the technologies based on impact and do-ability, and to select the top opportunities to deploy.

    • For each technology, an action plan is developed, describing the actions to be taken to sustainably embed the technology

    • The outcome is captured in a technology plan (20-30 pages).
       

  • A Customized, Ring-fenced Platform for Your Company. With this service, there is no longer a need to build and maintain your own technology catalogue. Instead, we offer you a secure, ring-fenced area as part of the TechnologyCatalogue.com structure, only accessible to your own employees. We give you the tools to select the most relevant technologies from TechnologyCatalogue.com, and supplement the external reviews with your own views.
     

The Customized, Ring-fenced Platform also helps you to keep track of the various discussions that have taken place with suppliers.

We can also feed you with insights about technologies that are likely most relevant to you. Extra modules selected from our ‘Innovation Lab’ can be added to streamline the technology deployment delivery, all based on tens of years of hands-on and strategic experience with technology deployment.

 

Here’s what Joe Dischinger said about the ring-fenced area of TechnologyCatalogue.com. Joe recently became our USA TechnologyCatalogue.com partner. Dischinger brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He has worked in various leadership positions at ExxonMobil. In his previous roles, he held the positions of Technology Portfolio Manager and Disruptive Technology Advisor.

“I have spent a career seeking out innovation with the potential to transform the energy industry and recognize one of the most challenging aspects is effectively deploying and managing technology to maximize your investment for competitive advantage.

A ring-fenced area of TechnologyCatalogue.com gives full access to a large and ever-growing overview of technologies, whereby the content is kept up-to-date by suppliers and selection can be done based on references and reviews.

By having access to external and internal reviews, it can help in the decision process. It gives Operators the confidence to deploy the right technology to the right places within their own company, and it helps to facilitate knowledge sharing within the organization”, said Dischinger.

Conclusion

Selecting the right technology may seem like finding a needle in a haystack, given the enormous choice. In this blog, we have given you insights on how the selection of technologies can be done, leveraging the insights that are available.

The impact to your business can be phenomenal. We make this statement based on tens of years of hands-on and strategic experience with technology deployment!

Curious how this can help you? Please contact us at [email protected]!

 

Interested to browse for technologies for your business? Click here.

 


About us

The founders of TechnologyCatalogue.com led technology deployment activities in support of assets across Shell. Over 600 deployments were successfully delivered, resulting in a very significant impact on safety, production and cost. We understand what it takes to get technology deployed, including all change management aspects related to it. Since starting TechnologyCatalogue.com in March 2018, we have supported multiple Operators in Upstream and Downstream with technology deployment.

Our platform TechnologyCatalogue.com was developed based on the first-hand experience that it is often difficult for decision-makers to stay up to date on available technology-driven improvement opportunities for their business. It was launched in Q3 2018 and is steadily growing in terms of content & functionality. Since the launch, >40,000 unique users have accessed the platform. We’re also developing customized versions of the platform. For example, jointly with National Energy Resources Australia, we have delivered a customized version of the portal for Australia (Nera.TechnologyCatalogue.com)

In addition to TechnologyCatalogue.com, we also support suppliers and end-users with getting technology deployment done, through consultancy & workshops.

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