Fulcrum
Optimizing Data Collection and Analysis Workflows for Oil and Gas Organizations

Oil and gas is a highly asset-intensive industry that involves employing rigs for exploration, pipelines for midstream, and refineries for downstream processes. Effective asset management is indispensable to reducing equipment downtime, inventory control, resource management, cost savings, and legal and regulatory compliance. But many in the industry continue to rely on traditional methods of collecting asset management data. Field personnel often depend on a clipboard, paper, and pencil to capture information from their work site. Due to inevitable human errors, the data is often recorded or transcribed inaccurately, causing unnecessary delays in reporting, loss of productivity, and equipment failure.

Fulcrum is changing the entire scenario by helping oil and gas companies design their own mobile apps to digitize manual data collection workflows and asset-management reporting. With Fulcrum’s web-based drag-and-drop app builder, users can design custom mobile forms based on their existing paper forms and deploy them to iOS and Android devices in the field. Every record collected in Fulcrum is automatically time-stamped and geo coded so managers can see exactly when and where each task was completed.

Once data is collected in the field, it is immediately available to managers in the office through the Fulcrum dashboard. The mobile app retains total functionality even in the disconnected environments where oil and gas workers frequently operate; data is simply stored locally on the device until internet or Wi-Fi is restored, when it automatically syncs to the cloud. This enables managers to remotely monitor inspections as they are happening and respond quickly to maintenance needs, as well as locate their on-field teams. “They can validate the data at the point of entry, for instance, asking the person to take a picture of an asset to assess its condition, and unless they do so, the data entry is not allowed,” remarks Coleman McCormick, Vice President of Product Development at Fulcrum.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform enables managers to perform real-time analytics on the incoming data rather than having to wait for field workers to return to the office and their notes to be transcribed. “With our highly advanced self-service-oriented platform of field service management, data collection, workflow, and process automation, users across oil and gas companies can effortlessly streamline their asset management processes,” said McCormick. This enables organizations to make more rapid, and data-driven decisions.

With our data collection and workflow automation platform, users in the oil and gas industrycan effortlessly streamline their asset management processes

Fulcrum’s clients span dozens of sectors, but since the platform’s inception in 2011, it has built a broad user base in oil and gas, electric utilities, water and sanitation, construction, engineering and telecom — industries that tend to have large, geographically dispersed field workforces.

Looking ahead, the company has exciting plans for expansion of both their team and the platform’s capabilities, with a focus on workflow automation and business optimization.“Underneath these developments, we are exploring our ambitions around extensive inclusion of AI into our geospatial intelligence solutions,” said McCormick.