How can Visioneering services bring competitive advantage to Aker Solutions?

Abstract

The topic of the Thesis belongs to business and strategic management field, with focus on technology innovation and its application in oil and gas industry. Three main theories that I built the thesis on are: Theory of Competitive Advantage, Resource based View and Value Chain. I am writing this thesis with Aker Solutions. Aker Solutions is an international provider of subsea equipment and offshore field design. Its portfolio of oilfield products, systems and services is spread from concept studies and front end engineering to subsea production systems, maintenance, modifications and operations services and solutions for extending the lifetime of oil and gas fields (www.akersolutions.com). I belong to maintenance, modifications and operations (MMO) business stream that is located in Stavanger. Maintenance, modifications and operations represent a growing market for Aker Solutions as existing offshore and land-based installations mature. MMO’s key offerings are Increased Oil Recovery/Enhanced Oil Recovery, tie- ins and other modification activities like life extension of existing fields and facilities. Aker Solutions is a global provider of products, systems and services to the oil and gas industry. Its engineering, design and technology bring discoveries into production and maximize recovery. The company employs approximately 17,000 people in about 20 countries. Aker Solutions fast facts:  Revenue: NOK 29.1 billion  EBITDA: NOK 2.2 billion  EBIT: NOK 1.7 billion  Market Cap: NOK 18 billion (www.akersolutions.com) My direct responsibility field in MMO is Technology and Innovation. As a response to the industry’s activity decrease and cost cut in 2014, operators required that service companies find smarter ways to work to save money and time, while mitigating HSE (Health, Safety, Environments) risks. Aker Solutions initiated new concept that consist of innovative services and called it Visioneering. Visioneering is a combination of engineering and visualization. The company invested into building an Iport, a facility where those services can be utilized and some of the clients started to use these services. Iport can contribute to safer offshore operations due to training and simulation of those onshore. This is a unique way to apply technology both on land and offshore, locally and internationally. The intention of this Thesis is to look how Visioneering services can bring competitive advantage and if company’s employees are able to see that. Key findings demonstrated that Visioneering services are recognized by the majority of employees (ca 70%) as those that can bring competitive advantage to the company. Such benefits as saving time and hour’s budget, mitigating HSE risk, improving communication between the parties involved are the benefits that client gets having applied Visioneering to project execution. These benefits clients get differentiate Aker Solutions from its competitors. Visioneering is an innovative concept, and the reason why it is possible to build it is, first of all, the resources that it poses. They are combined in a chain of value adding activities. The recommendation from this thesis is to implement Visioneering in the project execution model and include it in the “business as usual” when offering services to the client. To implement Visioneering we have developed an internal project “working smarter”. Working Smarter MMO has clients as main focus. Clients require better efficiency and lower cost levels in the industry to realize complex projects. As Margaret Øvrum (EVP TPD at Statoil) said: “We need to solve the cost inflation together” (Intranet, Internal database, Aker Solutions). “Working smarter” is a combination of activities internally that are aimed at cost reduction for our clients. It is an improvement program aimed at increasing efficiency for Engineering, Fabrication, and Installation while reducing man- hour cost and indirect spends, and optimize cost level across MMO. “Working smarter” project contains different modules. Visioneering is one of them. Main purpose of this thesis is to explain how the new concept Visioneering will bring a competitive advantage to our company. Through this research I intend that our employees become more aware of the benefit Visioneering bring to the projects. I used explorative design to conduct this research and made it qualitative with primary and secondary data collected.