Stonebridge Reports 18 Percent Revenue Growth in Q1

Notable Stonebridge Q1 highlights included:

• Announced the opening of a new regional office in Oklahoma City. Stonebridge cited the rapid growth of its oil and gas consulting business as the impetus behind the decision to establish a permanent presence in Oklahoma City, which is home to several of its clients. Stonebridge, whose headquarters is in Tulsa and with regional offices in Dallas, Houston and Oklahoma City, said it expects to open additional regional offices in 2014.
• Successfully achieved the 2014 renewal of its Microsoft Partner Network Competencies. With the renewal of its multiple Gold Competencies, Tulsa-based Stonebridge retains the distinction of being in the top 1 percent of Microsoft partners worldwide that have reached this proficiency level in Microsoft solution development. It also owns the distinction as the only Microsoft Managed Gold Partner based in Oklahoma.

The company also made significant high-level personnel announcements in Q1, including:

• Cory Knowles joined Stonebridge as Managing Director of its Dallas operations, reporting to Adam Hutchinson, who oversees the company’s oil and gas business group. Knowles, an expert in enterprise systems integration in upstream and midstream oil and gas companies, has more than 15 years’ experience from both the business and consulting sides of the oil and gas industry.

Specifically in Q1, Stonebridge won competitive contracts with new clients and extended long-term engagements with existing accounts. Q1 business highlights include:

• Stonebridge completed analysis and design activities for the phase one implementation of an upstream information architecture (UIA) for a Houston-based oil and gas company. The UIA will enable efficient and accurate management and consumption of data throughout the organization. The initial phase focused on establishing the core components of the solution architecture as well as staging activities for the integration of Merrick Systems ProCount-based content into the data hub. Future phases will integrate information from additional E&P systems such as Enertia for financial accounting and Peloton WellView for drilling and completion activity.
• A major US midstream oil and gas company engaged Stonebridge to provide business intelligence advisory services to improve labor reporting. To enable management to perform better monitor labor cost allocation, Stonebridge is working with key client subject-matter experts to implement an analytical solution that enables both guided analysis through standard dashboards as well as via self-service analysis and reporting. The standard dashboards will provide “at a glance” access to key metrics such as percentage of labor allocated to capital as well as the ability to perform analysis on under-performing areas. In addition to the dashboards, “in memory” data models will be delivered that are refreshed on a nightly basis to enable business analysts and managers to perform advanced analysis and recreate new reports on their own without direct assistance from the client’s IT department.
• A Houston-based upstream oil and gas company selected Stonebridge to provide software evaluation and vendor negotiation services related to a pending solution implementation for the client’s drilling and completions department. In the engagement, Stonebridge will oversee a detailed, end-to-end evaluation of the two down-selected vendor applications, culminating in side-by-side pilot tests. Stonebridge will help develop the vendor application score card; serve as single point of contact for vendor questions; create issue log, daily summary and gap analysis templates; and document findings and daily pilot results. Additionally, Stonebridge will develop a detailed implementation plan, resource estimates, and input into the business cast supporting the recommended solution. The client noted Stonebridge’s knowledge of upstream industry applications and vendor independence as primary considerations in its decision process.
• An oil and gas exploration and production company based in Houston engaged Stonebridge to provide technology advisory services to optimize reporting and analysis solutions pertaining to operations and production. Stonebridge will determine high-value reporting and analytical visualization requirements of the client’s user base and perform an inventory of data sources, including the client’s existing Landmark OpenWells content to identify data deficiencies and map additional sources to fill content gaps. Stonebridge will also assess the current data architecture and recommend new structures and automated processes to optimize data population. Lastly, Additionally, Stonebridge will define and produce data visualizations to meet the client’s analysis requirements.
• A Houston-based upstream oil and gas company selected Stonebridge to provide process optimization and related technology services to automate data-driven business processes around well status changes. The client operates more than 10,000 producing wells throughout the Southwest. Stonebridge conducted an evaluation of the client’s existing processes and gathered high-level operational requirements. Stonebridge created a multi-phase project plan to optimize and automate workflows for the submission, qualification, tracking, verification and communication of well status changes using Microsoft SharePoint as the core communication and collaboration platform. The client chose Stonebridge because of its knowledge of oil and gas business processes and its status as a Microsoft Gold Managed Partner with extensive experience in process optimization and automation.
• Stonebridge completed an advisory services engagement with a global oil and gas company to assess the feasibility of a structured, large-scale data migration project involving newly acquired well assets related to shale oil and gas plays in North America. The envisioned solution will migrate drilling data from three source systems—P2 WellCore, Peloton WellView and Infostat RIMbase—so that it can be surfaced in the client’s preferred Landmark OpenWells well lifecycle management solution. Stonebridge performed data validation from the source systems and developed a migration process that was successfully tested by the client’s data management team. The client selected Stonebridge because of its deep knowledge of oil and gas industry applications and information management expertise.
• An independent upstream oil and gas company renewed its agreement for SmartSource Database Administration (DBA), a Stonebridge managed services offering for on-demand DBA services. The client’s existing SmartSource DBA agreement, focused on SQL Server support, was terminating after the client retained in-house SQL DBA personnel. With the implementation of new industry applications—AFE Navigator and Quorum—running Oracle databases, the client is looking to Stonebridge to provide SmartSource DBA for its Oracle environments.
• An international procurement company for the oil and gas industry engaged Stonebridge to provide advisory and technology services to improve the client’s customer web portal. The customer portal is built on the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Enhancements include improved site usability and extended user experience functionality, such as user profiles, a site directory, improved page navigation and layout, and various user-defined site changes. Stonebridge’s services included documenting high-level business requirements; creating a site map and wireframes; and developing design compositions. The client selected Stonebridge based on the successful delivery of a previous project and Stonebridge’s status as a Microsoft Managed Gold Partner.
• Stonebridge began phase one of a contract with a New Jersey-based healthcare management company to provide strategy consulting and implementation services for cloud-based IT service desk and customer relationship management environment. The solution, built on BMC’s cloud-based Remedyforce Service Desk and Salesforce Sales Cloud, is designed to deliver enhanced ticket tracking and management; increased operational transparency; improved customer relationship management; improved reporting and analytics; and optimized business processes. The client selected Stonebridge in a competitive bid based on Stonebridge’s deep IT service management experience.
• Stonebridge completed a complex SharePoint upgrade and migration project for a leading regional electricity provider. The project involved upgrading the client’s SharePoint environment to SharePoint 2013. Stonebridge built out the new production environment in a “stretched farm” environment that physically divides the SharePoint servers across two separate data centers for high availability in the event of an outage. Stonebridge collaborated with the client’s internal developers in troubleshooting and deploying SharePoint customizations and updating third-party applications for use on the SharePoint 2013 platform. The client selected Stonebridge based on its history of delivering a wide range of solutions, ranging from enterprise content management (ECM) to business intelligence solutions.
• A leading regional power company entered an agreement with Stonebridge for SharePoint SmartSource managed services. The SmartSource agreement provides 24×7 administrative, maintenance and trouble-ticket support for the client’s three separate SharePoint environments. Prior to this project, Stonebridge provided support for the client’s Microsoft technology implementations, including developing a portal-based electronic content management (ECM) system and various business intelligence (BI) solutions, to include an innovative location-based BI solution to track key assets and system outages.
• A midstream natural gas services provider engaged Stonebridge to implement a comprehensive enterprise content management (ECM) solution based on the SharePoint 2013. The client’s existing records management environment consists of two separate SharePoint versions. Stonebridge will manage the consolidation and migration of the existing records management environment onto the SharePoint 2013 platform. As part of the solution, Stonebridge will install and configure two SharePoint 2013 farms for test and production environments. The solution design will be based on a client-defined record file plan and retention policies. Stonebridge will also recommend a “best fit” third-party email management tool that integrates with SharePoint in order to comply with the client’s email lifecycle policies that require emails to be archived as records.
• Stonebridge worked with a Fortune 500 power company to assess the capabilities of SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn, a collection of high-availability and disaster recovery functionality. Stonebridge installed and tested AlwaysOn in Q1 in a proof of concept (POC) environment and will continue to work with the client’s staff to prove the workability and define procedures for migrating databases between machines. The AlwaysOn project was a component of the client’s agreement for SmartSource Database Administration (DBA), a Stonebridge managed services offering for onsite database management and monitoring, periodic database optimization and review, and database upgrades and patches. Stonebridge has provided onsite DBA support to the client’s Oracle and SQL Server database environments since 2006.
• A leading supplier of ready-mix products for the construction industry renewed its SmartSource DBA agreement with Stonebridge for on-demand managed database services. Stonebridge provides support for the company’s Microsoft SQL Server database environment. This marks the seventh consecutive year the client has renewed its SmartSource DBA managed services agreement. The client cited its close working with relationship with Stonebridge as the key factor in the decision to continue its relationship with Stonebridge.
• A public water utility authority selected Stonebridge to provide advisory and implementation services for the client’s cloud-based IT service desk. The solution, built on BMC’s Remedyforce Service Desk, will enable the client to better align IT service delivery with the needs of the business. Stonebridge will provide Remedyforce implementation services that support ITIL processes for a comprehensive range of IT services management, including incident management, problem management, configuration management, service level management, change and request management, service request management and self-service delivery. The client selected Stonebridge because of its demonstrated ability to provide integrated services for process improvement and implementation.

About Stonebridge

Since 1995, Stonebridge has provided business advisory and technology enablement services that help organizations harness the power of their people, processes and technology. Our clients look to us as a strategic partner with a shared commitment to achieving their business objectives and maximizing business performance. For additional information about Stonebridge, visit our website at www.sbconsulting.com.

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