Case study: IBM Lotus Notes knowledge management

It's in some of the world's most remote and hostile environments that companies drill for oil and gas. Not only is it a tough life, it's one where specialist knowledge is thin on the ground. Each drilling situation is new and different. Drilling decisions need to be made quickly; making the wrong decision can result in the loss of massive sums of money.

What's needed is instant access to hard-won experience, information and expertise. And that's exactly what Transition delivered for Hughes Christensen, one of the world's leading oil and gas-drilling tool providers (and part of Fortune 500 corporation Baker Hughes). As well as being praised by the client, Transition's solution also picked up a couple of global awards.

Hughes Christensen had long wanted to shift the emphasis of its business from product sales to consulting - after all, the company had some of the best drilling expertise in the world. The problem was that this expertise was 'locked' in the heads of individuals around the globe. There had been attempts to access and publish this information, both on paper and via an 'expert system', but these had not delivered anything like the expected results. Nigel Meany, director of engineering services at Hughes, explains: "We ended up with a manual the size of a telephone directory, which, like all reference books, was destined to sit on the shelf, unused."

Hughes approached Transition with the problem. Transition provided the answer in the form of a knowledge-sharing tool called 'Drilling Performance Guidelines', built around Lotus Domino/Notes. Using this tool, experts publish and share their hard-won knowledge - and access the knowledge of others. Meany explains that the system is flexible, with users actively encouraged to challenge the knowledge stored there: "The project team meets three times a year to update and refine the system as new knowledge comes to light. So we have a live, up-to-date source of knowledge."

The system was a phenomenal success, the provision of this expert knowledge quickly becoming a core part of Hughes' business proposition in the form of the company's new 'OASIS' consultancy services. This has provided customers with some highly impressive returns on investment. For example, oil-drilling specialist BP Norge saved nearly $7,000,000 on a drilling optimisation project in Norway. Says Meany, "With drilling operations costing up to $350,000 a day, that's a huge saving in an industry that may deal in large numbers but is also desperately keen to be cost-effective."

So impressed are Hughes' customers with the Drilling Performance Guidelines system that many of them have asked for access to it, or even to license it themselves.

The impact on Hughes' business cannot be underestimated. Being able to make this knowledge available has transformed Hughes Christensen into the de facto source of best practice information within the drilling industries. This was recognised in 1999, when Transition was awarded the coveted 'Greatest Business Impact' Beacon Award by IBM Lotus.