How Great North Wellhead and Frac replaced manual processes with widespread automation

Ursula (FlowForma)00:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, How Great North Wellhead and Frac Is Using Automation to Replace Manual Processes. Your lines are muted, but please put questions in the Q&A and our presenters will answer them at the end. You'll receive a copy of the recording afterward, and a short survey will appear at the end.

Ursula (FlowForma)00:31

Today we're joined by Greg Dowell and Shay O'Connor. Greg is the CFO of Great North Wellhead and Frac, a CPA with 20 years of experience in oil and gas services and industrial companies. Shay is Head of Solutions at FlowForma. He reviews the digital process needs of customers based on the results they want to achieve and works with clients in multiple sectors globally. Shay, over to you.

Shay O'Connor01:15

Thank you, Ursula, and welcome, Greg. Before we get into Greg's use case, some background from Forrester, who surveyed thousands of organizations globally in 2021 on their progress with digital transformation and automation. Eighty percent of respondents still had paper in all, most, many or a few of their processes.

Shay O'Connor03:05

The biggest finding was that when people were working remotely, or just in different locations, any cross-departmental process with paper in it broke down, even where only a few processes involved paper. Remote working is becoming the standard, so what do you do to combat that? The other graph showed that 99% were using Excel and their inbox to route information manually.

Shay O'Connor04:15

That means they're not properly digitized from a process point of view. There's a misconception that if a form is no longer physical, if it's a Word document or information in my inbox, it's digital. Technically it is, but it's not a process. You don't have visibility of where things stand, or clear accountability for who is doing what. There's no timer on your inbox, and Excel is the same. To properly digitize, you have to automate each step and bring them together cohesively.

Shay O'Connor05:46

With more people working remotely, this isn't just nice to have. Most organizations see the benefits and that it will help them gather accurate data and make better decisions, but a lot of them don't take the step from being interested to actively digitizing. They always put something else in front of it, because it's a new way of working.

Shay O'Connor07:44

Greg and his team evaluated why they needed to do it and decided to go ahead. And of the organizations we know that have started digital transformation, none have reversed it; they keep expanding. You're changing the way you operate, now and for the future, and you're gathering information so you can make decisions based on data rather than hunches.

Shay O'Connor09:18

Greg, it's a big step to go from 'this sounds like something I'd like to do' to 'we are doing this'. Can you tell us a little about Great North?

Greg Dowell10:15

We're based in western Canada and mostly serve gas companies, with a little mining and industrial work as well. We provide new and remanufactured wellhead equipment and rental equipment, including a larger pad-based system. We have field services, so guys with trucks out in the field doing service work, plus an engineering team and machine shop for specialized and custom equipment. So there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of process requirements. We hold API monogram and ISO certification, we have 10 locations across Alberta and Saskatchewan, and we're privately owned by a US-based private equity company and management.

Shay O'Connor11:31

A lot of moving parts. What motivated you to digitize your processes, and why then?

Greg Dowell11:48

Part of it was a transition in ownership about three years ago. Growth plans were put in place, and when we looked at our existing processes, it became clear that to support the next phase of growth we had to look at them. A lot were manual: Excel, emails, and a lot of stuff in people's heads. It worked, but the scalability was a risk. If you have to increase your capacity, you either change the way you do things or add more people, and when you stack it up, adding the technology is usually more cost-effective. It also improves efficiency, reduces human error, and means you're not relying on one or a few key people who might be sick or leave.

Shay O'Connor13:21

The feedback we get is that staff appreciate having tasks normalized. They don't have to ask what to do or who to send something to, so they spend more of their time on the job they were hired for.

Greg Dowell14:04

Part of it is asking what your people are doing with their time right now, and whether it's the most valuable thing they could be doing. Time spent on manual activities or searching for data usually isn't. So you're not only avoiding adding people; you're getting more effective use of the people you have. All those small bits of time add up.

Shay O'Connor15:34

So what did you look for in an automation tool?

Greg Dowell15:40

First and foremost, something easy to use, so people didn't have to spend a lot of time learning the software. We wanted the option of third-party support to help us get started while we built our internal capability, and the flexibility to scale up or down. Then value for money: what happens to the cost as we add processes, and can we have a fixed number of users. And it had to fit our existing IT environment. Being within Microsoft, where people are already used to working, with no new licenses, helped as well.

Greg Dowell17:24

You need people to use it to get the benefit from it. Saving an employee here or there only makes sense if people are using it and it's adopted, so ease of use was number one.

Shay O'Connor18:23

We see the same in our own surveys: price and cost are two different things. What's the actual cost of having it, or of not having it? If you focus only on the price, you ignore the cost in both directions.

Shay O'Connor19:01

You're changing how people work: no more sheets of paper, and the inbox is no longer the source of truth. What advice would you give anyone looking to get buy-in from stakeholders?

Greg Dowell19:39

Explain what you're trying to do and what you see as the roadblocks, so they understand the rationale. I call it the problem identification phase. Include stakeholders early: here's what we see coming, here are some options, what are your thoughts? Get their feedback and make sure you listen, so it doesn't feel like management picked a tool and told them to use it. Paint a picture of what it could look like. They'll come up with benefits and concerns you hadn't thought of.

Greg Dowell21:05

Then when you start the pilot, they feel part of it, and they expect some bumps in the road. Before we made any commitment, we tried a simple pilot process with a high confidence of success and our early champions on board. We didn't pick one that needed a lot of redesign; we picked one we were happy with that was just very manual and time-consuming. These are standard change management activities, but it's important to take the time to do them.

Shay O'Connor22:29

A big thing you mentioned is real feedback. People often assume that because something has been done one way for 10 years, it's the only way. When you build the process from real feedback from the process owners, their sense of ownership increases, and so does adoption. Did you find that?

Greg Dowell23:26

Absolutely. If they feel they own the process and put their stamp on it, they'll feel they own the digitized version too. And they'll push the other people in the process to use it, rather than saying 'let's just go back to the old way', because it makes their life easier and they designed it.

Shay O'Connor24:32

Some organizations start with the most complex thing they can find, and it takes so long that people lose momentum. You picked something straightforward. Tell us about your first process.

Greg Dowell25:13

We started with our quality assurance group. Our API and ISO certifications come with audits and reporting requirements, including non-compliance reporting, for example on slight defects in goods from suppliers. That was all email and Excel tracking, and as the organization grows, the number of reports increases. The QA team was already feeling the pain and wondering how they'd meet audit requirements as we grew, so they were open to it.

Greg Dowell26:08

The process didn't really change; just the form it came in and having a repository for all that data. It went fairly smoothly, and we got benefits we hadn't fully appreciated at the start. The reporting, traceability and auditability are really high now, so the time saved at audit time was significant.

Greg Dowell26:42

Next we tried HR onboarding and offboarding. We were still developing that process on paper, so we were redesigning it while digitizing it. We learned that doing both at the same time increases the time and complexity. It's in a good place now, but if you combine digitization and process improvement, plan for that scope.

Greg Dowell27:32

Performance management was simpler. We didn't have an HRIS, so instead of Word documents or Excel, people enter reviews in one place and submit them to their manager, with different levels depending on the employee.

Greg Dowell28:01

Invoice EDI was more complicated, and we already had some experience when we took it on. You upload invoices to customers through a system like Cortex or OpenInvoice, with a lot of information attached, and our ERP couldn't do that well on its own. FlowForma became the intermediary: it combines the invoice from our ERP with the backup from the field and uploads it. It shows the tool doesn't have to cover a whole process; it can be part of one. It saves time on manual uploads and gives us better records.

Shay O'Connor29:34

That covers the gamut, from simple to complex, including redesign. Is the fear factor gone now?

Greg Dowell29:47

I wouldn't call it fear, but we want to be careful, take our learnings, and spend the up-front time that increases the probability of success. With the right management and review, our confidence keeps growing.

Shay O'Connor30:22

You've also worked with our partner in Canada, Pontem Innovations. And now that the data you collect is tight, reporting is much more straightforward.

Greg Dowell30:45

Absolutely. We can see where things are, spot issues, tag and filter, and have that transparency. Most companies have multiple systems that do some things well and struggle with others. This fills those gaps without replacing systems that work, it fits with Microsoft Office, and nobody has to learn a whole new system. With so many moving parts in our company, that flexibility has been really beneficial.

Shay O'Connor31:45

What takeaways would you share with everyone here?

Greg Dowell32:06

Pick a pilot that's going to have a high degree of success, and engage with people. Don't confuse process digitization with process improvement; they're separate things, and especially on your pilot, don't pick something that needs a lot of improvement. Get some quick wins and familiarity with the system first.

Greg Dowell32:54

And roll out in phases. Don't try to get the 100% perfect solution off the start; the system is adaptable. Start with maybe 80% of the solution, use it for a few months, then come back. What you thought the 100% solution was changes once you've used it. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even at 80%, our onboarding and offboarding was better than the email-based process we had. We probably tried to get it too perfect the first time.

Shay O'Connor34:23

Perfection is the enemy of progress. Get stuck in when you're nearly there and keep improving, because real-world feedback drives changes you wouldn't have anticipated.

Greg Dowell35:00

Also, test before you roll out. With our branches, we test a process at one branch, see how it works, take the learnings, and then roll it out to a larger group. Any issues are identified up front, so the rollout is smoother and adoption is higher.

Shay O'Connor35:42

My final question: what's next for you?

Greg Dowell35:48

One shows me it's getting embedded in our organization. A branch manager reached out after talking to our QA person. He tracks jobs on a whiteboard in his office, and he wants his guys in the field to see it on their phones instead of someone walking over to erase and rewrite it. It's a simple process for us to improve with FlowForma, and the fact that he came to me, when I hadn't even thought of it, is a good sign the organization is thinking about how to digitize.

Greg Dowell37:07

We're also exploring accounts payable processing, where FlowForma would play a key part rather than do everything, and preventive maintenance tracking across the company rather than segmented by service line. We just want to continue to digitize across the company. It's a journey.

Greg Dowell38:06

What I like is that it isn't function-specific. We can use it across operations, engineering, quality assurance, HR, finance and IT, and it has the same look and feel. Someone who's only used it for QA goes into onboarding and already knows how it works, so it doesn't feel like learning a new system every time.

Shay O'Connor39:13

A little more on FlowForma. The platform sits in your Office 365 environment as an app, and all the data it collects stays within your tenancy. We don't keep your data. Because you're already on Office 365, you don't need new infrastructure, so you can get up and running quickly once you have support in the organization.

Shay O'Connor40:41

It's a no-code platform, so you can create and manage processes yourselves, get feedback quickly and change them. It's not about circumventing IT; it's about enhancing what they do, because I don't know an IT department that isn't flat out. As Greg said, it can go into every department and fill the gaps between systems, with the same look and feel, without learning a big new tool.

Shay O'Connor42:04

Some customers focus on saving time, others on sustainability and removing paper, others on getting more from their people, and all of it saves money. You won't always know which process will have the biggest impact. One of our customers has over 400 processes digitized, and the one that saves them a fortune wasn't the first one they did; it was the third or fourth.

Shay O'Connor44:13

So it's not a giant leap of faith. Go step by step: find your champion, start with a process that's obvious to you, and you'll get better adoption and support. You become self-sufficient, and we run an onboarding program that shows you step by step, and support you afterward. Because you're collecting data accurately, you can make decisions based on data instead of hunches.

Shay O'Connor46:06

In five years' time, everybody will be doing this. The difference is that those who start now will have five years' worth of data. When's the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The second-best time is today, and the same goes for digitizing your processes.

Ursula (FlowForma)47:14

First question: when organizations are ready to start digitizing, how do they start? Shay, could you share a couple of tips?

Shay O'Connor47:52

First look at your infrastructure. If you're on Office 365, look at what's available there, because you've already paid for it and can add apps from different vendors; if you're on Google, the same applies. Then decide who owns the project and is responsible for creating processes, training and managing who does what. And you need a supporter in the organization: somebody has to sign the check, but also back the initiative, or you won't get the adoption you hope for. Then, as Greg said, pick a good, obvious process to start.

Greg Dowell49:51

I agree. Identify where the benefits will be, so the champion can clearly articulate why you're doing it: transparency of data, avoiding extra hires, better use of the people you have. Most organizations have to take some step eventually, so be proactive about it.

Ursula (FlowForma)50:44

Greg, someone asks what type of reports or dashboards you can see or use in FlowForma.

Greg Dowell50:50

There's a lot of flexibility. You can do simple lists, sorting and filtering, export to Excel, or use Power BI, which is the most visually appealing, with graphs and charts. There's some work to build Power BI reports, but once the data is out of emails and multiple spreadsheets and in a useful format, you can do a lot with it.

Shay O'Connor51:51

The information is now normalized and accurate. And like the processes, dashboards evolve: start with a straightforward one and keep building on it.

Ursula (FlowForma)52:39

Shay, can you integrate other solutions and software with FlowForma?

Shay O'Connor52:46

This comes up more and more. FlowForma has an external API rule builder that lets you connect to any system with a documented API, to pull and push data. It's not the most colorful part of the business, but it's crucial. It would be set up by someone who understands the data behind it rather than a casual user, but there's no coding. I used to be a developer, so I know how much time that saves.

Ursula (FlowForma)54:52

Thank you both, and Greg, it's great to hear about the success at Great North Equipment. Thanks to everyone for joining. A short survey will pop up at the end; please fill it in and we'll pass your questions to our experts. Have a lovely day.