Mobile technologies are presenting great opportunities and challenges to even the savviest of IT. Smartphones and tablets are replacing personal computers at an accelerated pace. Corporate executives, employees, business partners and customers are embracing a culture that demands access to business applications and corporate data “anytime and anywhere.”
Driven by mobile innovation and the consumerization of corporate IT, this evolution is being felt in all segments of the oil and gas industry. Whether they work in exploration, extraction, refining or transportation, many employees carry a cell phone or a tablet and use it as the device of choice for accessing corporate applications and data that allow them to do their jobs.
However, the pervasiveness of mobile technology at home and on the job may make it easy for some organizations to underestimate the challenges that must be overcome to realize the full potential of this new way of doing business – and exploit the opportunities for both efficiencies and business improvement.
Mobile technology's “disruptive” nature offers CIOs the opportunity to spearhead growth and change. Rapid, mobile collaboration can help open up new business models and ways of working with suppliers and customers. According to BP PLC's Group CIO, Dana Deasy, mobile IT can also be a powerful tool for the oil and gas sector – particularly in enabling people to collaborate more effectively across geographies, time zones and remote locations.
Mr. Deasy says that, in this new, more connected way of working, specialists no longer need to fly from a centralized center to a remote location to diagnose, for example, an issue with equipment in a far-off refinery. Instead, BP can utilize one of the collaboration tools now available in conjunction with mobile technologies to bring the information to the specialist. And this can happen in the employee's own workspace, reducing cycle time and costs while also reducing intrusions on work-life balance and the stresses and lost productivity that often result from frequent travel across multiple time zones.
But the pervasiveness of the mobile culture has created certain expectations of employers. Approximately 78% of adults in the US use smart mobile devices. As consumer access to mobile technology skyrockets, employees expect their workplace IT experience to be as easy and secure as their consumer experience. They want to interact with their colleagues like they interact with their friends, in any place and at any time, and they want to decide what devices, applications, and services they use to get their jobs done.
As a result, traditional corporate boundaries have changed – not only for the worker who may no longer need a dedicated workspace, who can wrap up a project after the kids are in bed, or who can access the protected information necessary to create a custom client quote without being in the office – but also for CIOs and IT managers. Organizations anxious to embrace mobile IT must challenge and re-evaluate their established IT structures to capture the operational efficiency, employee productivity, and user satisfaction benefits of mobile IT while retaining enough control to satisfy the company's security and compliance requirements.
At BP, user connectivity is enabled to applications and data rather than the network, and security is focused on the applications and the data, not the platform or device. A corporate app store provides employees with access to approved applications with common architecture, while pilots in social media, virtualized laptops, and encryption of smart phones help the company discover new potential ways to innovate. According to Mr. Deasy,“ the most successful pilots are integrated into the company's day-to-day operations. For example, we're currently reviewing a number of potential apps ranging from alerting engineers about task approvals to providing safety information on-the-go. Deployments are integrated with comprehensive end user education and this new way of working and providing IT services is communicated to BP's employees through a variety of internal marketing and education campaigns.”
In order to transition successfully to IT mobility, CIOs must understand that meeting expectations in a world of mobile IT is a strategic requirement, one that presents a new host of challenges from the board level to the end user. Protecting information in a networked world is a war that businesses and governments are constantly waging. Cyber security becomes even more of a concern when data is accessed via mobile devices. Many companies that have long been ahead of the curve in IT policies and procedures have dramatic cultural shifts to make, transitioning from controlled systems to a more open and less supported environment as employees access the network with any one of thousands of possible devices and applications.
Staying ahead of the curve now has new meaning: IT roadmaps that once helped plan for the next two or three years are now being updated on a 60- or 90-day basis.
Mobile IT is a new reality of global business – and it is already having a profound effect on the oil and gas industry. However, only those organizations with clearly defined plans will be well positioned to capture the facilitated performance, long-distance decision-making, and increased productivity potential while mitigating risks to the security and flexibility of the enterprise.
