A mid-sized E&P company approached Magnum Forge after being on their ERP system for several years. They had implemented the system in a rush to meet their initial public offering schedule. They felt like the system was not as flexible as they had hoped, and that key functionality was missing. Magnum Forge ran a brief assessment project, which found that most of their issues were related to inappropriate configuration choices, lack of training, and poor data conversion done during the original implementation. In addition, there was functionality that was licensed but not set up during the implementation.
Magnum Forge’s experience with the client’s ERP system made short work of identifying these issues. In addition to the issues the client had identified, Magnum Forge came to the assessment with a list of common issues our clients have when using the ERP system they had purchased. For each issue, Magnum Forge described the impact of the issue, the estimated cost to address it, and the number of hours needed from the client’s business and IT representatives to resolve. Our client then added the expected time savings per month they would achieve by resolving each issue and ranked the issues in priority order.
With a high-graded list in-hand, our client had a roadmap for getting the most from their ERP system and asked Magnum Forge to lead a project to address most of the issues, leaving the lowest priority issues to be addressed later or not at all. Some of the issues were so easy to correct that Magnum Forge assisted the client in correcting them during the assessment to get immediate results. Magnum Forge then created a comprehensive plan to clean up the data and configuration, redesign business processes, and retrain users.
The remaining issues were bundled into a single project that ran several months with two Magnum Forge consultants working with the client to resolve the issues. As the project developed, the client asked Magnum Forge to create desk procedure documentation across the company to assist with onboarding new employees. During the project, as more people came to understand the role of Magnum Forge, users approached the Magnum Forge resources for support, to get quick feedback on issues they were experiencing.
The project exceeded our clients’ expectations by streamlining existing business processes while implementing new, more efficient business processes and exploiting unused functionality in the software. Most importantly, the project helped change the mindset of the employees. Instead of simply accepting unsatisfactory business processes, they began proactively thinking about how to improve the way they were working and approaching the IT department on their own. The project sponsor was pleased that the users were taking responsibility for business processes and engaging IT directly, now that they understood the configuration options and alternate ways to use data fields. After pausing the project for the fourth quarter and year-end close, Magnum Forge resumed work on the next set of improvements to help them make the most of their software investment.
Magnum Forge has a recognized team of professionals focused on supporting upstream oil and gas organizations with asset acquisitions. We use best practices from our vast experience to help each client succeed. Let us introduce our services now so that when it’s time to make a change, you know who to call on for help.