Data Management Goals

"If there are a hundred organizations in an industry, they will have a million ways of doing the same thing": especially with respect to data management . Why is this so?

The simplest reason I can come up with is the fact that the oil and gas industry is very broad, and very deep (no pun intended!). Even if we were to restrict ourselves (and narrow the realm) to upstream and specifically exploration and production, there still exist numerous different activities, and hence various kinds of data.

To further complicate matters, these activities are not performed by agents of the same scale. Organization sizes typically range from one or two man operations to multi-billion dollar oil companies employing thousands of people. So, the data management solution that Exxon uses cannot be used by "Jed Clampett" (...from the Beverly Hillbillies http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/fictional/07.html)
Note: Jed will frequently appear in my commentary and will represent the small and medium oil companies.

So, it is reasonable to assume that a single product, a "mother of all data management solutions" is not going to work for us. They will have to be numerous, highly-scalable sets of tools that will be required to get the job done. And in order to identify these tools, we need to first understand the job that needs to be done. What do we hope to achieve with E&P Data Management?

Overarching Goals of E&P Data Management
Let me begin by adding a few here, and as and when you guys send in comments, I will update this list (at my discretion - this is my blog! ;) )

1. Access: The primary reason any data should be organized and managed is to provide fast, reliable access. I should be able to find my data when I need it. This is fairly prevalent in the industry today. We have invested millions of dollars in proprietary databases with sophisticated search features. Also, we use tools like Google Desktop to search for files on our local hard drives. However, what I need is to be able to find all available data when I need it. This means, even data that I did not know about - data that resides on your hard drive...
2. Efficiency: E&P Data Management helps reduce redundancy - not just of data, but also the effort that goes into creating that data. This prevents people from having to re-digitize logs that were digitized (but not shared). So whether it was toys, when you were young, or logs when you are old - sharing is good!
3. Conservation: The goal of any successful endeavor always involves saving time and saving money. And a system that functions as a well-oiled machine will serve that exact purpose. Here are some interesting facts from Key Organization Systems (http://www.keyorganization.com/statistics_page1.asp)
   - The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year retrieving misplaced information on desks or in files.
   - Workgroups lose 15% of all documents they handle and spend 30% of their time trying to find lost documents. 7.5% of all documents get lost completely.

Can you think up of any other broad goals of E&P Data Management? If so, feel free to comment.

Next time, we will speak about the typical E&P Data Management workflow.