Companies in the oil, energy and utilities sector are the largest in the world, and they strive to make the most out of all their available data resources to add value to their businesses and maintain customer satisfaction. Increasingly they look to Big Data and analytics to achieve this. A combination of the tools and technologies available for Big Data in general and analytics, in particular, have made it possible to turn this ever-growing abundance of data into decision-making insight.
Environmental Challenges in Oil and Energy Sector
The challenges faced by the energy and oil industries, are more often than not critical. From predicting and preventing failures, to reducing fuel consumption, waste and carbon emissions and providing cyber security, risk management, and instant root cause analysis, companies are now looking to Big Data to overcome these obstacles.
Technological Challenges in Utilities sector
Technology becomes smarter every day. Smart grids for power distribution consist of a network of smart meters and cell towers known as take out points (TOPs), which relay data using the WiMAX (Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access) wireless communication standard. The data is shared between TOPs and the control systems over a fiber optic internet connection. Companies in this sector witnesses almost 200 million smart meter reading per day. Big Data is used to provide customer power utilisation trends and to provide issue resolution in real-time.
How is the data extracted?
Organisations have begun to recognise the value of the data they have and continue to accumulate in various formats, be it machine, transactional, social media, financial, marketing and so on. However, the biggest chunk of raw data comes from the field. Data analytics can actually drive the outcomes of many key business processes in industry today. In addition, real-time analytics yields the best insight from which to base investment and business decisions.
Big Data Analytics
Early adopters of Big Data and analytics in the oil, gas, energy and utilities industries have the greatest insight from their big data sources. The analysis of real-time data from the huge numbers of deep well sensors in the field has resulted in the unattended, automated, real-time monitoring of pressure, temperature, and other complex events. This eliminates the need for error-prone assessments, which are usually a manually intensive effort. The results are an increased yield and waste reduction. Analytics also helps businesses to be proactive in problem resolution by driving alerts and improving safety, efficiency, and responsiveness, thereby saving millions of dollars in costs.
Big Data in Customer Service Enhancements
Big Data and analytics also serve to enhance day-to-day customer service. Speech analytics solutions based on historical and real-time customer calls, along with marketing calls, provide an insight into customer behaviour that can be used to improve customer retention. Analytics showing trends in emotion, sentiment, word selection, and pitch and tone of voice, provide valuable insight for these companies, allowing them to evolve the best in products and services.
The Potential of Big Data Analytics
The simple truth is that the earlier companies adopt and implement Big Data and analytics solutions, the earlier companies can proactively and intelligently address the demands of the business, deliver an excellent customer experience, see a growth in sales, and improve privacy, security and overall decision-making.
If you would like to find out more about how Big Data could help you make the most out of your current infrastructure while enabling you to open your digital horizons, do give us a call at +44 (0)203 475 7980 or email us at Salesforce@coforge.com
Other useful links:
What does it mean to be a data driven organisation?
Data driven security: Machine data is the first line of defence
Communications security: Essential, or a threat?
