Industries > Energy

Everything about the energy industry is large: its reach (global), its players (the world's most massive companies), its infrastructure (trillions of dollars in assets), its facilities (the earth itself), its responsibility to humankind (unfathomable).

Its data is that large, too. Energy companies can harness it with better business intelligence.

We can keep adding to the list of energy industry characteristics that are large. The most current item is its agenda, set recently by the World Energy Congress, a gathering of industry leaders and government authorities that happens once every three years. This agenda is "sustainable growth aided by existing technologies" and by "improved communication with the government and the public at national and international levels."

Clarity can partner with companies in the energy industry, including utilities and oil and gas, in their growth objectives. Technologies for energy growth are of course "green" technologies like low emission buildings and smart grids, and replacements for fossil fuels, like biofuels and nuclear energy. But business intelligence is a proven growth technology as well. It's actually much more than technology--it's a business solution that uses technology to explore data, identify growth opportunities, enable data-driven decisions, and drive action.

With BI, energy companies can determine with more precision when and where to deploy green technologies, and to apply alternative fuels, not only to meet demand (and thus grow), but to generate a return on their investments. In a commodity industry like energy, where long term viability requires competitors to thoroughly know and control their costs, a return on investments is always important. When those investments involve the kind of capital outlay needed for new growth, BI becomes even more critical: it delivers internally-focused information about cost reduction opportunities in the supply chain and in operational systems. This kind of information, especially when paired with a tailored BI strategy for how to use it, can make the difference between high and low growth.

Besides growth, the energy industry agenda includes better communication with the government and the public on a global scale. Energy companies that use BI have an advantage here too. The data quality, data integration, and reporting capabilites provded by BI allow these companies to better meet compliance in all their activities, and to communicate this compliance more quickly and effectively to regulatory bodies.

Communication from energy companies must also include the public, according to the World Energy Congress. For some time, the energy industry has been proactive about its public communications, incorporating social networks like Facebook and Twitter into their communications strategies. With the push for transparency, this trend will continue; with the push from regulators, all the resulting data must be captured and available. Through comprehensive information architecture services, advanced techniques like data virtualization, search, mobile BI, and data store development, Clarity helps energy companies bring the data they generate from communications activities into the BI environment for analysis.

If you're an energy company ready to expand growth, use technologies in a more targeted way, improve your public communications, and reduce costs, contact us today to learn how Clarity can help.