A technology platform for your company

22-07-2020
header A technology platform for your company

Over the years we have supported tens of different companies with streamlining technology delivery, and to create a balanced portfolio of technology opportunities for their company.

Essentially all these companies have some sort of internal technology catalogue, in different shapes and forms. Sometimes these catalogues are very basic; such as an overview in PowerPoint or in Excel. And sometimes these catalogues are more advanced, including web-based environments. 

An internally developed technology catalogue offers advantages. It gives an overview of technologies that are considered important by the company, and it gives a chance to combine such overview with internal reviews, as well as links to internal documents such as application guides.

However, the internal catalogues usually also have a few downsides, whether simple or more advanced:

  • They rely on internal resources to keep the content up-to-date. However, as this is not the core business of Operators, such overview is often out of date very quickly. It is more effective to let suppliers create and maintain the overview.
  • They only contain a limited number of technologies; usually only a very small subset of technologies that are under development or available globally. Essentially, companies don’t know what they don’t know.

A well-structured and maintained overview of technologies is essential. Without it, it is difficult to take conscious decisions which technologies to select to address business challenges. Companies without a clear overview of the key technologies that apply to them will not be able to make the most of their assets, or develop projects in the best possible way. 

 

The importance of external reviews and references

But there is one other important aspect that is a weakness of essentially all internal technology catalogues that we have seen: they mostly only contain internal views on the applicability of technology. Of course, internal views matter, but we also need to keep in mind that technology deployment is very much an influencing game. If you want to convince your colleagues to adopt a certain technology, it helps if you can refer to deployment references and external reviews. If other companies – operating under similar conditions as your company - have successfully used a technology, then that is a very strong argument to also get the technology deployed in your company!

Nothing gives more confidence than a review from someone we trust. Such review doesn’t need to be long, a few sentences can be sufficient to think: “perhaps this is something I should consider as well”. This is not different from daily life, where we rely on opinions of people that we trust to decide which plumber to call. Or big decisions such as in which part of town to buy a house; if already 10 friends live in a certain neighbourhood, you would typically do less research than when you’re the first to move somewhere.

 

TechnologyCatalogue.com

Deployment references and reviews are cornerstones of TechnologyCatalogue.com. The platform was developed based on 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. The platform already has >700 registered technologies, and our aim is to grow this number to >10000 within the next couple of years; including technologies from other industries that can also be of impact to the energy industry. 

The growth of content will go hand-in-hand with introducing advanced functionality. As such, it will still be easy to find the right technology to address your challenge, similar to the way that we are able to find the right hotel or restaurant using platforms in daily life.

Reviews on the platform are always by name, never done anonymously. This way, you can check the background of the person on LinkedIn or other channels. Naturally, an independent expert is not going to say anything positive about a technology if he or she wouldn’t mean it; the person is not going to put his or her credibility on the line.

The deployment references and reviews not only aid the selection process, it also saves you a lot of time from talking to suppliers that you don’t know yet. We know from experience suppliers are keen to meet and talk about their value-adding technology. With this platform, you can simply tell suppliers: “We’re happy to talk to you, but first we want to see a credible number of references and reviews on TechnologyCatalogue.com”. Based on the information provided, you can then decide to discuss with suppliers. As a supplier, you can naturally use the functionality to your advantage as well. By using the power of references and reviews, you can open the door of potential customers.

 

Combining the best of both worlds

In addition to the  functionality of TechnologyCatalogue.com that any user will have access to for free, we can offer additional functionality that will combine the best of both worlds: a restricted, customised area within the TechnologyCatalogue.com infrastructure, accessible only to your own employees. Such area will save you time and money.

  • With such technology platform, you no longer need to build and maintain your own technology catalogue. The content is thereby kept up-to-date by suppliers, and they have a clear incentive to ensure that the latest status is being shown. 
  • The platform allows you to select technologies using external reviews and references as screening factors. All on the basis that if multiple companies have used a technology, and multiple people have indicated that they have good experience with the technology, it may also be a suitable tech for your company. The experiences from others give you, as well as your colleagues, the confidence that the technology can also be successfully deployed in your company.
  • You save a lot of time having to talk to different suppliers. You can effectively steer them to first place their tech on TechnologyCatalogue.com and attract independent reviews. This way you leverage the expertise of people outside of your organisation. 
  • Data analytics will help you to understand where the needs are, in addition to what is being fed back directly. It hence provides you with additional eyes and ears.

The restricted, customised platform will be located on the same secure server as TechnologyCatalogue.com and can be linked via own intranet or accessed directly.

customised platform

The following functionality would form the starting point for your technology platform

  • A customised homepage including the logo of your company. The page can be accessed via your own intranet.
  • Space on the homepage to include a message from your CEO, CTO and/or another senior leader within your company. 
  • Customised pre-defined filters on the homepage, reflecting your main business priorities (or instead of business priorities: following naming convention of internal work processes). 
  • Technologies selected from TechnologyCatalogue.com mapped against your priority areas. As a customer, you decide which technologies will be visible, and we equip you with the tools to make the selection.
  • Option to include in-house developed technologies, using the same template as for the technologies extracted from technologycatalogue.com. 
  • Internal experts can add comments/reviews, only visible for your own users.

 

How it works in practice

Practically, this is how your platform gets populated with technologies.

  • A supplier can add their technology to the public TechnologyCatalogue.com platform for free. 
  • The moment a supplier registers its technology, the supplier can also express interest to be visible on the Technology Platform of your company. 
  • We can provide you  with a monthly overview of technologies that have been added to TechnologyCatalogue.com 
  • We will also give our recommendations which technologies to add to your Platform, based on your selection criteria, and based on anticipated business impact and ease of deployment. 

 

Benchmarking functionality

The functionality of the Technology Platform can be enhanced further. One element that we recommend to add right from the start would be benchmarking functionality. 

In an easy-to-digest overview, it shows which technologies have already been used by other companies. For example, companies within the same country and/or the same industry. The information provided thereby comes at a greater level of detail than what is provided on a technology page. Functionality is included such that subsets of the matrix can be shown. 

At any moment in time when new information becomes available about technologies and the usage of the technology, the overview will immediately be updated accordingly.

benchmarking 1

Matrix of technologies versus companies. 

Further details can be made visible in a database underneath the matrix, with the following information for each cell of the matrix. Other information elements can be added.

  • Business Need
  • Technology Name
  • Supplier
  • TRL level
  • Deployment lead
  • Decision maker
  •  (Planned)
  •  Year of deployment
  • (Anticipated) impact 
    • Production (boe/d)
    • OPEX reduction  (US$mln/year)
    • CAPEX reduction (US$)
    • CO2 emissions (tonnes/year)
    • Safety exposure hour reduction (hours/year)

Also, tools can be added to assess the relative impact of technologies, as well as the ‘do-ability’ to get the technology sustainably embedded in your business.

benchmarking 2

Data analytics

Data analytics about usage of the platform can be provided. The data analytics can be made visible at different levels. I.e. for the overall platform, for the specific categories, all the way down to individual technology pages. This way getting clear indications about the interest of people within your company in the solutions. The following data insights will be included in the online data dashboard.

1. Visitor Analytics
To track the number of visitors, the following data will be displayed: 

#visitors, #pageviews, growth statistics of visitors and pageviews over time

2. Content Analytics
To track the growth of technology pages overall and for specific categories, the following data will be displayed: #live technology pages on the platform, #technology pages per module, growth statistics of technology pages over time

 
3. Technology Page Analytics

For each technology, the #pageviews and visitors’ clicking behavior (outbound links) are shown over time, as well as insights about the companies that view the content (available when the user is logged-in). Also, it will highlight the number of contact forms that have been filled out and submitted to the supplier.

 

Any many more possibilities!

And here are many other options to expand the functionality to further streamline the delivery of your technology in your company, such as:

  • An application guide for each technology on the platform, developed by an industry expert
  • Creating user groups for efficient knowledge sharing on specific technologies within your company
  • Functionality to efficiently engage with suppliers
  • Feedback loop mechanisms to suppliers based on field performance of the technology.

 

Conclusion

With your own technology platform as part of the TechnologyCatalogue.com structure, you are being fed with powerful information about the most applicable technologies for your company. It saves you time and money to create the right technology portfolio for your company, and will support to accelerate the update of technology!

Curious how this can help you? Please contact us at info@technologycatalogue.com

 

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, >60,000 unique users have accessed the platform. We’re also developing customised versions of the platform. For example, jointly with National Energy Resources Australia, we have delivered a customised 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.