Their knowledge spans everything from inventories of assets oil wells, pipelines and terminals and who owns them, to geological information and details of the financial performance of individual assets in the market. This information is indispensable to the oil and gas industry, which uses Wood Mackenzie research to help decide where in the world to develop operations and where to cut back. Initially, we saw the website as offering the biggest advantages, says Heathcote. But over time we have come to realise that the authoring system is going to deliver really significant benefits. The problem for Wood Mackenzie is the production and publication of its analysis.
Researchers conduct studies and produce complex analysis consisting of text, tables and charts.
The indices from these charts would be stored in a separate database and infrequently reconciled. This process was difficult and prone to possible error, says Katrina Heathcote, Director of Strategy at Wood Mackenzie. Setting up workflow control was virtually impossible, making it hard for the company to have a foolproof method of ensuring consistency. Information could all too easily appear in more than one place, making it hard to guarantee accuracy. For clients the process was unwieldy too.