Energy

Risk is unavoidable in the energy industry due to high capital investments, geographically dispersed facilities, hit-or-miss explorations, and global demand fluctuations. To be successful, risk must be understood, managed, mitigated against, and even leveraged to create opportunities.

The financial and operational impacts of important decisions must be fully quantified at all levels of the enterprise. You need to evaluate all possible scenarios, not just the Best- and Worst-case, and consider the likelihood that each outcome will actually occur. You need to identify your most important risks and opportunities so you know exactly where to focus your attention. Only with this type of comprehensive risk analysis can you confidently choose your best course of action.

Solutions

The Vanguard System™ is a comprehensive business solution for improving the quality, reliability, and speed of management decisions. It does this by helping you Collaborate with colleagues on important plans, Analyze alternatives using state-of-the-art modeling and simulation techniques, Automate routine decisions using expert system technology, and Improve overall management effectiveness by adding structure to a normally chaotic process.

Business improvement is all about working smarter. Vanguard brings together the people, analytics, and systems required to help your business operate intelligently.

Here are just a few of the ways Vanguard supports the energy industry:

• Capital planning: Know which capital intensive projects to invest in using risk-based financial and operational analysis.
• Risk mitigation: Fully understand risks before engaging in projects. Implement risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans early on.
• Sales and operations planning (S&OP): Enable real-time collaboration between Marketing & Sales and Operations to ensure production capacity can profitably support customer demand (and vice versa).
• Supply chain planning: Optimize your supply chain network, inventory levels, distribution plans, and more.
• Demand forecasting: Predict demand for products and raw materials, even when historical data is scarce.
• Mix / Portfolio analysis: Optimize product portfolios, pricing, and promotions.
• Operational efficiency: Conduct process improvement/Six Sigma projects to reduce costs, cycle times, and waste.
• Knowledge automation: Expertly guide operators, technicians, and support agents through complex decision-making processes using intuitive question-and-answer sessions.

Content Management System (CMS)

Vanguard Content Management System (CMS) is a Web-based expert system development tool for non-programmers. CMS Web-based applications guide customers or employees through complex decision-making processes using interactive, automated question and answer sessions. They are core software applications that can improve the operational efficiency of your key business processes.

CMS applications can assist energy industry companies in exploration, operations and finance by enforcing consistency in business decisions across the company. Exploration and operations expertise can be automated and accessed at any time to assist researchers and managers working in different areas of the world. CMS applications can simulate routine financial processes to increase the efficiency and consistency of financial decisions. Energy companies that share expertise, reduce inconsistency and improve efficiency are more dynamic and can react faster to changes in facility operations and global markets.