Achieving Natural Gas Operational Excellence
At nGenue, Natural Gas Operational Excellence is our vision; it’s what we’re committed to enabling for every Marketer, Producer, LDC, Utility, and Pipeline who is seeking to improve its business performance. Through our engagements, we are exposed to a well-rounded view of the industry, the challenges natural gas businesses face and how they are equipped (usually not so equipped) to manage them. Recently, our head of Customer Success wrote an article published by the CTRM Center, entitled Achieving Natural Gas Operational Excellence. It’s calls out the three most impactful actions a Natural Gas business can take to address existing shortcomings. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read this article – it’s our way of informing you what others are contending with and, in many cases, are remedying in order to improve business performance. I also encourage you consider its assessments and recommendations relative to your own business operations. Below are the opening and closing paragraphs … you’re best to read the entire article for the details in between.
Speak with enough natural gas Marketers, Producers, LDCs, Utilities, and Pipelines and a pattern of issues impeding business performance and customer experience quickly materialize. Marketers, Producers, LDCs, Utilities, and Pipelines manage an ever-increasing amount of data related to natural gas purchase, transportation, distribution, and risk; all of this in relation to customer acquisition, enrollment, natural gas usage and billing. Much of this data is constantly changing and involves complex relationships and calculations. In most cases, Marketers, Producers, LDCs, Utilities, and Pipelines are challenged to manage their operations data productively and efficiently, which impedes growth, taxes profitability, and adversely affects the end user experience. To realize its full potential, a natural gas business should take three actions to eliminate the most common barriers to business performance and put themselves on a path towards Natural Gas Operational Excellence.
Marketers, Producers, LDCs, Utilities, and Pipelines face increasing competitive and compliance pressures, requiring increased operational efficiency, data integrity and process improvement. Their operational system must support this, but most do not. For many Natural Gas businesses, spreadsheet management, repetitive manual tasks and associated human error are the norm. Such environments are unproductive, frustrating, and can even break down when so much time is spent trying to ensure the data is accurate and current. And business decision-making dependent on such environments is prone to miscalculation and, in many cases, falls prey to best guessing. These are known impediments to natural gas business performance. Address them and you will find yourself on the fast track to Natural Gas Operational Excellence.
-Ken
