Insights of the Energy industry.
Planning is more critical than ever in the energy sector.
We take a look at why utilising EPM tools within the energy industry can help business create new revenue streams, optimise current ones, and add more value to their portfolios than ever before.
Introduction
Introduction
Given the complexity of the oil and gas industry and the inherent market uncertainty, there are significant risks to financial performance. As such, effective financial planning and analysis are critical for oil and gas companies to draw insights from and produce meaningful forecasts taking into account both internal and industry-wide dynamics.
Shift in the Energy Landscape
Shift in the Energy Landscape
The energy industry is experiencing challenges like never before. From dwindling stocks, global risks to the transportation of physical supplies, increased volatility in the financial markets; it’s never been as challenging to be profitable in the energy industry, and with fundamental shifts in environmental strategy, it’s crucial to plan for the future.
Whether you’re an upstream, midstream or downstream company there are several factors that could lead to challenges.
Key factors include…
Key factors include…
Market Volatility
Increased market volatility is often driven by supply and demand, geopolitical events and market dynamics.
Geological Risk
Risks associated with unforeseen issues in subsurface geology and reservoir complexities.
Logistics & Supply Chain
Disruptions in the supply chain such as severe weather, port congestion and route blockages can cause shipping delays.
Freight Rates
Increased fuel costs and lower vessel availability often affect shipping costs, thereby eating into profits.
Geopolitics
Events in the wider geopolitical space and trade policies can greatly influence projects.
These factors pose significant challenges to the day to day operations but also to finance. FP&A is important for several reasons.
Understanding how the business will perform can serve as a guide to making key decisions and allocation of resource.
Analysis can also show periods of likely cash shortages. Examples may include delays in construction of refineries at the same time as periods of high inflation.
Sufficient cash availability and usage modelling can highlight such liquidity risks and help the business plan short term loans in advance and avoid last minute borrowing at punitive rates.
In today’s business environment there are large amounts of data to process and understand. It is becoming more apparent that traditional methods involving disjoined systems, countless spreadsheets and clunky data loads are posing significant challenges to FP&A functions. Such a fragmented approach can often lead to discrepancies, difficulties in consolidation and lack of real-time visibility of financial performance.
This often leaves CFOs and finance managers spending more time ‘fixing the system’ and less time making business improvement decisions.
Energising the Sector
Energising the Sector
Connected planning is revolutionising the FP&A functions within the industry and resulting in a significant advantage to those who adopt early and implement effectively. As a leading consultancy in the EPM space, Bolt Consulting Group are able to implement comprehensive and strategic solutions to organisations that need to optimise financial planning, budgeting and forecasting. We have the experience and knowledge to initiate meaningful discussions and generate buy-in within your organisation.
Should oil & gas companies consider investing in a planning solution like Anaplan or Pigment?
EPM software can come in many different forms, and with so many options around, there are two key standout options when it comes to planning software.
Energy companies face a unique challenge, so let’s explore what these systems can provide to resolve the potential issues.
Implementing EPM isn’t cheap – but it pays for itself!
Implementing Anaplan or Pigment does come with costs, such as licenses from the vendor, and having a trusted partner to implement the technical aspects of the system correctly. Getting it wrong can be time-consuming and costly, which is why it’s worth talking to professionals with many years of experience implementing these systems, such as Bolt Consulting.
However, when it’s done right, having a system like Anaplan or Pigment will help lead to increased revenues, quicker go-to-market, more profitable promotional activity, lower costs, and higher business valuations. Many companies looking at investment or IPO will find that having a proper system in place is a prerequisite.
Let’s take a brief look at each system.
Anaplan is a leading planning tool.
Anaplan is a leader in providing high-quality EPM cloud platforms, helping businesses of all sizes improve their decision-making, optimize operations, and achieve business goals.
It’s a powerful tool that can be tailored and built to suit the company structure, and can solve problems like financial planning and budgeting, sales and operational planning, supply chain planning, workforce planning, risk management, and compliance reporting.
It’s a flexible platform that can be customized to specific needs, while being scalable to allow for growth of the business.
Anaplan has been proven at over 1,700+ clients around the world.
Some of the worlds leading companies have trusted Anaplan for their planning needs and are adding value with it’s fantastic toolset.
Key Overview
Pigment is shaping the future.
Pigment is a cloud-based planning and budgeting platform that is paving the way in AI technology to enhance analysis and user interaction.
It’s a user-friendly platform that can be used by anyone within the business, and covers all of the same use cases.
Pigment is revolutionising the planning space by utilising new AI technology to speed up the process and make interrogating data faster than ever before.
Pigment is rapidly growing with over 100+ clients around the world.
As a platform Pigment is rapidly evolving and they’re investing a lot of time and money into expanding functionality.
Key Overview
About Bolt Consulting
Bolt Consulting is a financial systems specialist that can help whether you need to implement general ledger systems, ERP such as SAP or Oracle, or EPM planning software like Anaplan or Pigment.
We’re run by ex-Big4 qualified accountants with the highest certifications available within each system, meaning we won’t let you down.
We can help.
Both platforms come as a shell out of the box, but Bolt Consulting has a library of accelerators that help speed up implementation, reduce implementation costs, and get these systems up and running quicker than most.
Ready to discuss how we can help you?
If it sounds like we can help you it’s time to have a chat. Get in touch with us via one of the methods below.
Let’s do great things together.
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