Customer story:

Learn how 75 experts at energy giant Aker BP leveraged XaitPorter to collaborate seamlessly, achieving a record number of PDOs

Aker BP, one of the largest independent oil companies in Europe, has streamlined their global expert collaboration and document development process. This has contributed to less time spent on compiling and formatting documents, and more time invested in the quality of their content.

Business outcomes:

  • Smooth expert hand-offs
  • No more compiling & reformatting
  • Improved quality & impact
  • Submitting more PDOs at once
AkerBP logo

Region
Global

Company size
1100

Industry
Oil and Gas

Solution
XaitPorter

About Aker BP

Aker BP is an oil and gas company that explores, develops, and produces oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf. They operate six field centers, Alvheim, Edvard Grieg, Ivar Aasen, Skarv, Ula, and Valhall, and are also a partner in the Johan Sverdrup field. Aker BP is one of the largest independent oil companies in Europe, with a total production of around 450 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboepd).

Existing Solution Didn’t Meet Their Needs

  • Existing Tools. Several problems were caused by the Word approach, including compiling documents and placing diagrams and charts. When the documents reached a certain megabyte size, the program crashed, the files were corrupted.
  • Serial Process. “Developing a PDO document requires expertise in many different areas,” explained Henrik Meinich-Bache, Office Administrator. Writers parsed the Word document into sections, which only proliferated version control issues.
  • Extensive Data. “Developing a PDO document requires expertise in many different areas, including geological evaluation, reservoir evaluation, drilling and completion, and field installation, as well as HSE, organization, and execution,” explained Silje Josdal Kartfjord, HSSEQ Manager, Subsea Alliance. That is a mountain of data to research, write and organize.
  • Compiling Documents. “Our most recent PDO project would require 34 different writers to send me their documents individually. After that, I would have to cut and paste the content and format it,” added Kartfjord.
  • Reformatting Documents. “Everyone who worked on the licensing round applications spent far too much time formatting and modifying in Word. The licensing round coordinator at the time decided enough was enough after yet another frustrating application was submitted,” continued Meinich-Bache.
  • Accountability Tracking. “It would be impossible for me to keep track of who has accessed the documents and what changes have been made. I repeat, a complete mess. Standard desktop publishing tools work well when there are a few writers and reviewers, but not when there are many,” added Kartfjord.

“XaitPorter is very intuitive and easy to use. Most people figure it out pretty quickly.”

Silje Kartfjord 
HSSEQ Manager, Aker BP

Silje-Kartfjord-Aker-BP-bw-540x540

Significant Benefits

At the end of the last millennium, no co-authoring solution existed that met the security, workflow, and efficiency requirements for large, complex E&R documents. That was the start of a fruitful collaboration between BP Norge and a few bright minds who developed and launched XaitPorter in 2002. BP Norge later merged into Aker BP. Since then, they have leveraged XaitPorter to empower over 1,500 global users to produce 1,600+ projects and counting, each with multiple documents, much more efficiently.

  • Efficient Hand-offs. “For one of the documents we just wrote, we had 34 different writers and 41 different reviewers. That means 75 different people worked on the document at the same time. It went smoothly from start to finish,” said Kartfjord.
  • Expert Collaboration. “Allows our teams to co-author large documents easily and securely, thanks to features like templates, access control, version control, cross-referencing, automatic indexing, easy diagram placement, and more,” said Meinich-Bache.
  • Streamlined Process. “Aker BP’s PDO creation process has been simplified and streamlined,” Kartfjord explained.
  • Data Control. “Other sectors have more "generic" and evenly distributed expertise, which makes writing documents easier. But in the oil and gas sector, you need contributions from a lot of specialists. It's a recipe for chaos if this diverse group of experts is left to provide their input via file sharing. That’s why you need a solution like XaitPorter,” explained Kartfjord 
  • Content Quality. “XaitPorter provided significant benefits as our teams could primarily focus on the content and work simultaneously across the different sections of each PDO,” Kartfjord added.
  • Faster Production. “The best part about it is that you can cut and paste images, diagrams and text from various sources, and everything gets a uniform look based on your brand identity. As a result, we save a great deal of time during post-production,” Kartfjord emphasized.

 

XaitPorter screen mockup with logo

A Wonderful Collaboration Tool

For over twenty years, XaitPorter has helped energy and renewable companies worldwide drive sales and growth by applying the power of innovative technology to collaborative document creation. Today, Xait counts over 50+ energy companies among our global partnerships, including those operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, where Xait’s flagship solution is the gold standard.

“XaitPorter allows our teams to co-author large documents easily and securely, thanks to features like templates, access control, version control, cross-referencing, automatic indexing, easy diagram placement, and more. It’s a wonderful collaboration tool,” Meinich-Bache explains.

  • Internal Instruction Text. “In this way, writers will know what they need to include in each chapter. Upon reviewing everything, I can easily tell if they have covered every requirement. The contributors can refer to this guideline each time we write a new PDO,” said Kartfjord.
  • Co-authoring. “In the oil and gas sector, you need contributions from a lot of specialists. It's a recipe for chaos if this diverse group of experts is left to provide their input via file sharing. That’s why you need a solution like XaitPorter,” emphasized Kartfjord.
  • Multifaceted Documents. “XaitPorter is an excellent tool for companies that create documents requiring as much multifaceted collaboration as PDOs,” added Kartfjord
  • Layout and Formatting. “The best part about it is that you can cut and paste images, diagrams and text from various sources, and everything gets a uniform look based on your brand identity. As a result, we save a great deal of time during post-production,” said Kartfjord
  • Standardized Content. “It’s much easier for us to submit lots of PDOs at once when we use standardized content from one document to another. With a PDO, there are many specific content requirements, so I have created a chapter-by-chapter synopsis that we all use,” added Kartfjord.
  • Tracking and Auditing. Version control, date and time stamps, including user names and dates, and audit trails mean teams can track who has accessed the documents and what changes have been made - right down to the keystroke.

“XaitPorter allows our teams to co-author large documents easily and securely, thanks to features like templates, access control, version control, cross-referencing, automatic indexing, easy diagram placement, and more. It’s a wonderful collaboration tool.”

Henrik Meinich-Bache
Office Administrator, Aker BP

We Save a Great Deal of Time

Since implementing XaitPorter, Aker BP streamlined their global expert collaboration and document development process. As a result, they are saving time, and delivering more professional, high-quality, high-impact documents at the same time.

  • Communication. “I create a set of guidelines that I add to the title page. There are instructions such as "Use this type of bullet when creating bulleted lists". “This is how we reference, with author and title in this order,” Kartfjord added.
  • Multiple Teams, Multiple Document Types. XaitPorter is used across a number of teams to create a wide variety of mission-critical documents. For example, field development plans, or PDOs, well reports, APA licensing round applications, and reservoir characterization reports.
  • Time Saved. “Everything gets a uniform look based on your brand identity. As a result, we save a great deal of time during post-production,” explained Kartfjord.
  • Ease of Onboarding. “The solution is very intuitive and easy to use. It has a low barrier to entry, so most people figure it out pretty quickly,” emphasized Meinich-Bakke.
  • Submit More Bids at Once. “It’s much easier for us to submit lots of PDOs at once when we use standardized content from one document to another,” added Kartfjord. In the last few months, Aker BP has submitted a record number of PDOs.

With XaitPorter, Aker BP has achieved their goals for a streamlined process that eliminates document compilation and reformatting by fostering global expert collaboration. Today, they deliver more professional-looking, high-quality documents faster and easier.

That’s a good thing considering both exploration and merger and acquisition activities are part of Aker BP’s strategy for growth and value creation.

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