Accenture and SAP Launch Software Solution to Help Energy Companies Integrate Upstream Operational and Business Processes
SAP® xApp™ Integrated Exploration and Production Can Help Oil and Gas Companies Increase Productivity, Lower Costs and Reduce Cycle Times
HOUSTON; Nov. 11, 2004 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today introduced a software solution designed to help energy companies more efficiently manage their upstream asset portfolios to improve operations.
Accenture and SAP jointly designed and developed the composite application SAP® xApp™ Integrated Exploration and Production (SAP xIEP), which is powered by the SAP NetWeaver™ technology platform. SAP xIEP allows upstream energy companies to integrate critical knowledge, data and applications—including those for development, production, operations and maintenance activities—to better execute key upstream oil and gas processes.
By offering users the ability to easily access and leverage industry processes and information as well as conduct transactional processing across the numerous and often-disparate systems used in upstream operations, SAP xIEP significantly reduces the amount of time that energy professionals spend searching for data or reconciling integration issues. As a result, they can make smarter and faster decisions, produce accurate and transparent information, increase adherence to operational processes, and increase productivity.
“The digital oil field is both a solution and a problem,” said Dan Miklovic, vice president and research director, GartnerG2. “It produces more data than ever before, but oil companies must learn how to make the most of all that new information.”
SAP xIEP is designed to support critical upstream business processes, starting with upstream asset maintenance. Support for this process includes classifying and prioritizing maintenance work, reducing recurring maintenance and high-impact failures, optimizing inventory levels and availability of critical parts, predicting equipment failures and unplanned maintenance activities, and accelerating response times to internal and external partners.
“SAP xIEP is a powerful solution that, for the first time, brings upstream operational and business support processes together into one integrated environment,” said Peggy Kostial, the Accenture partner responsible for the company’s SAP Energy Program. “This capability is the next step toward unleashing the immense value that is currently trapped within the upstream supply chain due to lack of integration and streamlined business processes.”
Accenture and SAP plan to enhance the new solution to include support for additional functions including procurement, operations (planning, scheduling and maintenance) and accounting. When those capabilities are added, SAP xIEP will enable field and office workers to access the latest project-specific data from remote locations and view all relevant information, such as daily drilling data. Field and office workers will be able to synchronize the data from different sources and collaborate remotely with team members—such as well engineers, geotechnical professionals and administrative teams—to support critical upstream business processes.
“We are rapidly entering an age of service-oriented architecture, allowing customers to leverage flexible IT environments at reduced TCO,” said Claus Heinrich, member of the executive board, SAP AG. “SAP xIEP makes full use of these advantages, since it was developed to conform with Enterprise Services Architecture, SAP’s version of a service-oriented framework. With the release of SAP xIEP, we are delivering on our communicated SAP composite application strategy, better enabling our customers’ industry-specific processes and making relevant composite applications immediately available to them with shortened turn-around time.”
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 100,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$13.67 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2004. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software solutions*. Today, more than 24,450 customers in over 120 countries run more than 84,000 installations of SAP® software—from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize businesses to enterprise-scale suite solutions for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver™ platform to drive innovation and enable business change, mySAP™ Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP industry solutions support the unique business processes of more than 25 industry segments, including high tech, retail, public sector and financial services. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.” (Additional information at (http://www.sap.com)
(*) SAP defines business software solutions as consisting of enterprise resource planning and related software solutions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product lifecycle management and supplier relationship management.
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