NOTE: The following article appeared in the Tulsa Business Journal on March 12, 2013. It was written by associate editor Thad Ayers.
Tulsa-based technology consulting firm, Stonebridge, recently reported double-digit growth for 2012, due in part to sector and statewide boosts in business.
For the year, the company reported a revenue total of about $16 million, said company President and CEO James Ivy. That total is a 15-percent boost from 2011 and is highlighted with a 30-percent revenue boost from the company’s business service management division, which helps streamline IT data for the company’s clients for stronger efficiency.
“We had the best first half in the company’s history,” Ivy said. “If you look at the total year, we had one of the best years in the company’s history.”
A highlight for the year was the launch of the company’s Pipeline 360, which helps oil and gas clients — the bulk of Stonebridge’s business — gain an exhaustive digital picture of a certain area. Oil and gas clients can pull up a map and see past and current permits and projects in a given geographic location.
“We can go in and do point solutions off of that into a particular part of oil and gas,” Ivy said, speaking by telephone from his Tulsa office. “With all of that there’s a lot of visual and map-based data we’ve integrated into solutions for oil and gas companies so they can get information in a much more usable, readable and productive way. So that was a milestone.”
The company also added a social media-like component to the oilfield with its Enterprise Social Platform, called ESP. As Ivy put it, ESP helps integrate the former generation of those working in the oil and gas industries with current and budding professionals.
“‘There’s an app for that’ is what the consumer expects. If you go to oil and gas, which is where this was deployed, you have a lot of baby boomers that are retiring, and you have a lot of Gen-Yers — Gen-Xers included — that will be filling those spots as they retire,” Ivy said. “There’s a big brain drain that’s going on. Oil and gas companies are trying their best to reduce that gap, if nothing else. The question is how we can work smarter, better, faster and do so in fashion that’s very conducive to our employees and in a collaborative, sharing fashion.”
ESP is described as a Facebook-like network that extends the Microsoft SharePoint collaboration system to where it connects to an internal company community where employees and managers can connect, share profiles and stay corporately current while in the field.
“We want a senior petroleum engineer to impart his or her experiences with a particular well site in a particular part of the U.S. — we want that knowledge to be spread into other asset groups or groups that do similar work across the globe,” Ivy said. “It’s a way to get knowledge out there with less effort and geared towards a lot of the consumer type of tools everyone has become accustomed to.”
Looking into the future, Ivy said he sees Stonebridge utilizing more cloud-based software that help remotely connect consultants without being present.
With companies pushing for more mobile technologies, employees will still have to be onsite, but not in the numbers as before, he said.
“Instead of having a project where you have five consults on site, this technology would allow us to have one or two on site — and two or three remote,” he added.
Ivy also said the company may look to apply its Pipeline 360 solution to the property and casualty insurance industry. He reasoned that an adjuster could better understand a region before and after a catastrophe by streamlining data in a similar manner to pipeline maps.
“You can pull up some of these solutions we’re contemplating,” he said. “You can pull up your customer’s house and you can look at it before and after the hailstorm.”
That ability would likely also be available in the ever-growing tablet market, so adjusters could also work onsite.
Ivy didn’t name a timeline for when this concept would come to fruition.