Microsoft and Accenture Oil and Gas Industry Collaboration Survey 2010

For almost a decade, Accenture and Microsoft have been teaming to deliver business and technology solutions on the Microsoft platform, quickly and at scale. The alliance is a large and significant relationship for both companies. Together, Accenture and Microsoft founded Avanade, a global IT consultancy dedicated to using the Microsoft platform.

In 2009, Microsoft and Accenture conducted a study to examine collaboration tools and their potential in the oil and gas industry. In 2010, we have expanded the study to compare the change in the acceptance and proliferation of collaboration tools and social media channels in the oil and gas industry over the past year.

See the presentation about the Oil and Gas Industry Collaboration Survey 2010
[PDF, 313KB]

Read the study press release

Microsoft and Accenture oil and gas collaboration survey 2010. Part 2: regional findings

Read the geographic findings press release

See last year’s survey.

See the presentation about the Oil & Gas Industry Collaboration Survey 2009 [PDF, 877KB]

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This is our second oil and gas collaboration survey conducted jointly by Accenture and Microsoft. The online survey gathered the responses of 275 oil and gas industry professionals. Respondents included engineers, geoscientists, mid-level and executive management, business unit heads and project managers from a cross-segment of the industry including both younger and older age groups. The survey participants were from North America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, South America, Middle East and Africa.

The Collaboration Survey 2010 asked specific questions about the use and potential of collaboration technologies, including social media tools such as instant messaging, wikis and blogs, in the workplace to get daily work accomplished.

Collaboration is an integral part of oil and gas professionals' daily work environment, and the survey reveals that professionals are seeking new ways to collaborate through social media—73 percent of respondents see business value in this type of collaboration.

Most are using social media to build and strengthen professional relationships as well as to document and transfer knowledge. Although most surveyed are “on board” with social media for business use, they indicate their respective management is slow to realize its potential.

Existing company policies are impeding mainstream uptake, with security the most often cited factor in delaying company adoption. Key findings include:

• More than a third said these tools could improve their productivity by 10-25 percent. More than a quarter said they could reduce their travel budgets by this amount as well.
  
  
• The biggest barriers to effective collaboration in the workplace are the inability to find exact people or information needed (58 percent), broken workflows and process bottlenecks that prevent information flow (47 percent) and key resources only being available at limited times (44 percent).
  
  
• Oil and gas professionals are seeking a new ways to collaborate; 73 percent said social media tools are valuable for work collaboration, up from 40 percent in the 2009 survey.
  
  
• Although many see the business value of social media in oil and gas, technology lacks an industry champion for widespread adoption. Adoption of social media is being driven from the bottom up by individual work groups/teams (24 percent) and younger workers in their 20s/millennials (19 percent). Corporate executives ranked low in encouraging adoption (11 percent).
  
  
• Security is the factor cited most often in delaying company adoption of social media—39 percent are concerned about the ability of social media tools to control or secure collaborative environments.

So what does all this mean?

• Collaboration can yield “strategic” results (such as improved outcomes, improved worker performance, improved development of key talent) beyond the “tactical” benefits (reduced travel, simplified access to people, skills and knowledge): however it requires more effort to achieve the greater outcomes.
  
  
• Companies need to develop common solutions, but also establish the required roles, training, processes and rewards required to educate end users on how to use the tools and drive usage to achieve tangible business benefits.
  
  
• New social media tools for enterprise use are available that minimize security risks and provide protection for vital company information. The owners of content can designate readers, editors and content managers; grant or revoke access; open and close comment threads; and enact other fine-grained controls to protect company information.
  
  
• The oil and gas industry has always required collaboration across companies and entities (international oil companies, national oil companies, service providers, joint ventures), but these efforts are hampered by company standards or practices without a viable solution for most cases.
  
  
• Companies should invest in pilots to demonstrate the strategic benefits of collaboration solutions when combined with the required process, role, training and rewards components in place to drive the right behavior and outcomes.

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