IDC Energy Releases Big Data and Analytics in Oil & Gas Report

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Feb. 26 — IDC Energy Insights announced today the availability of a new report, Business Strategy: IDC Maturity Model Benchmark – Big Data and Analytics in Oil & Gas in North America (Doc #EI246850), which presents results from the first IDC BDA Maturity Model benchmark based on a study of 701 organizations including 100 oil and gas companies with $10+ billion in revenue. This report is a companion to IDC Maturity Model: Big Data and Analytics — A Guide to Unlocking Information Assets (IDC #239771), which identifies the stages, critical measures, outcomes, and actions required for companies to effectively develop Big Data and Analytics (BDA) competency, and should be viewed as a complement to IDC Maturity Model Benchmark: Big Data and Analytics in North America (IDC #245197), which presents an overall analysis of the survey results for seven industry verticals taken together.

“The oil and gas industry is ahead of others in achieving benefits that met or exceeded their expectations from their initial forays into BDA. At the same time, many oil and gas companies do not yet have the big data and analytics maturity to address the entire range of technology, staffing, data, process, and strategic intent requirements needed to capitalize on their data assets,” said Jill Feblowitz, Vice President, IDC Energy Insights, and lead analyst for the Worldwide Oil and Gas IT Strategies practice. “Our new BDA maturity framework will assist oil and gas companies in assessing their current capabilities and to evaluate gaps in reaching higher levels of BDA maturity.”

This study presents benchmark data on the maturity of BDA capabilities of North American oil and gas companies, identifies the key capabilities that distinguish oil and gas companies whose BDA efforts have met or exceeded their overall expectations from their competitors whose BDA efforts have fallen short, and offers guidance for achieving BDA success.

Key highlights of the report include:

• BDA will remain one of the oil and gas industry’s top investment priorities for the foreseeable future. IDC Energy Insights sees use cases for BDA in exploration, development, drilling production, and maintenance and in the enterprise using a combination of structured operational data and sensor data along with unstructured data.
• Two classes of oil and gas companies are emerging, “BDA haves” and “BDA have nots,” each comprising about 16% of the industry, immediately making BDA a defining basis of oil and gas competitive advantage. With 68% falling in the middle, the future of the oil and gas industry will swing on the BDA capabilities.
• Oil and gas companies should invest in their BDA competencies as there is a positive correlation between BDA maturity and successful outcomes of BDA initiatives. High achievers “skew right” on the maturity curve, while low achievers “skew left.” On average, higher levels of BDA maturity lead to better chances of achieving expected or greater-than-expected benefits.

To analyze the complexity of managing BDA programs, IDC’s BDA Maturity Model examines these four capabilities — technology, data, processes, and people plus intent, a superset of strategy inclusive of justification and budgeting practices. The model assesses each capability against five stages of maturity. While being a cross-industry model, when taken with IDC Energy Insights analysis, its measurements of maturity suit the need to characterize BDA maturity in oil and gas and, more importantly, identify the pathway to high-performance BDA programs.

“According to our research, to be successful, oil and gas companies need to create a BDA strategy that ensures investment is aligned across all five key aspects of BDA maturity – intent, people, process, technology, and data,” Feblowitz continued. “While common guidance tends to stress two sets of BDA competencies – technology and people – over and above the other three, this is misleading. Any BDA strategy is likely to be only as strong as the weakest link in its chain of capabilities, no matter the strength of its other capabilities.”