TULSA, Okla., Nov. 26, 2013 — Stonebridge, an award-winning business and technology consulting services company, today announced that in the third quarter it achieved revenue growth of 11 percent, compared to the same quarter a year ago.
“Stonebridge’s positive Q3 performance was primarily driven by increases in our Oklahoma and Texas operations, which experienced 20 percent revenue growth,” said James Ivy, Stonebridge Chief Executive Officer. “This growth was due to increased demand from our Oil & Gas clients in key service areas: process improvement, data management and enterprise architecture. We see this trend continuing into 2014.”
Stonebridge also made several high-level personnel announcements in Q3, including:
- Greg Foley was promoted to Director of Business Development for the company’s Texas operations, reporting to Stonebridge Chief Executive Officer James Ivy. Foley, a seasoned IT sales professional with deep roots in the Energy sector, joined Stonebridge as a Business Development Manager in May 2010 and has been a consistent top performer in driving new business with Oil & Gas organizations. In his new role, he is responsible for leading the company’s Houston-based business development team in driving new client acquisition as well as providing strategic sales support with existing Stonebridge clients with significant presence in Texas.
- Mark Brannon joined Stonebridge as Oil & Gas Practice Manager in Oklahoma City, reporting to Adam Hutchinson, Vice President of Stonebridge Oil & Gas Solutions. In his position, Brannon will focus on managing Stonebridge’s Oil & Gas customer base in Oklahoma City; developing business relationships with new and existing Oil & Gas clients; and integrating Stonebridge’s Oil & Gas business advisory services with the company’s core technology services. Brannon, who has more than 20 years’ IT industry experience, most recently was IT Manager of Enterprise Architecture Services at Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy.
Specifically in Q3, Stonebridge won competitive consulting contracts with new clients and extended long-term engagements with existing accounts. Key business highlights included:
- A startup energy company based in Oklahoma City selected Stonebridge to define their long-term enterprise content management (ECM) strategy using the Microsoft SharePoint collaborative platform. As part of this project, Stonebridge installed and configured a SharePoint 2013 development farm. Stonebridge also worked with the project sponsor to conduct a workshop with key business-side users to discuss prioritization of key content areas, including Internet portal, intranet, departmental and multi-disciplinary collaboration sites. The client selected Stonebridge because of Stonebridge’s deep oil and gas industry knowledge and extensive experience in SharePoint ECM business strategy and customization.
- An independent natural gas and crude oil exploration and production company based in Denver, Colo., engaged Stonebridge to provide advisory services for improving business reporting and analytics. Stonebridge conducted a Phase Zero™ assessment that identified major reporting gaps in business-critical upstream operational areas, including authorization for expenditure (AFE); drilling and completions; production volumes; geological and geophysical (G&G); reservoir; health, safety and environment (HSE); and marketing. Based on the assessment findings, Stonebridge developed a strategic business intelligence roadmap that included an enterprise reporting governance structure. Additionally, Stonebridge created templates for the client’s TIBCO Spotfire analytics applications.
- A leading provider of natural gas gathering, processing, transportation and storage services selected Stonebridge to provide full-time SharePoint system administration support. Via a SharePoint SmartSource managed services agreement, Stonebridge will administer the client’s SharePoint-powered intranet and provide mentoring and training to users. This new managed services agreement follows several SharePoint-related projects led by Stonebridge, including upgrading the client’s intranet to SharePoint 2010, providing SharePoint branding services and creating an enterprise-level SharePoint governance plan.
- An Oklahoma City-based startup energy company selected Stonebridge to layout their business operation and workflow for a significant oil and gas resource play in the Midwest region of the U.S. Stonebridge helped create and refine the prospect-to-spud process specific to the client’s needs and unique demands of the play. Input from multiple disciplines, including operations, geology, accounting, land and information management, was consolidated to create a streamlined process by which the client can maximize efficiencies, track progress and measure success.
- One of the nation’s top independent oil producers selected Stonebridge to provide SharePoint consulting and application development services for extending the client’s current SharePoint 2013 environment into an enterprise-class application platform. Specifically, Stonebridge is enhancing the client’s SharePoint 2013 intranet environment with an InfoPath-driven service request solution to digitize a number of internal processes, including new-employee onboarding. Stonebridge also is extending the client’s SharePoint intranet to automate approval of accounts payable invoices based on preauthorized spending limits. Additionally, Stonebridge is providing custom development support to enable SAP documents to be accessed via the SharePoint intranet. Lastly, Stonebridge is assisting with the client’s internal marketing team to incorporate new corporate visual branding into the SharePoint intranet environment.
- An independent oil and gas producer and operator based in Oklahoma City selected Stonebridge to create an enterprise business intelligence (BI) road map and self-service BI capabilities for production reporting. The client sought to perform deeper analysis and reporting using large amounts of data from disparate source systems. The initial phase of the project focused on using the PPDM data model as the integration layer for the client’s current applications. Stonebridge developed the data mapping and ETL processes necessary to integrate the data. Additionally, Stonebridge is assisting in the developing a field data capture application, which will be mobile-accessible and fully integrated with the PPDM data model and source systems.
- One of the largest natural gas producers in the Appalachian Basin selected Stonebridge to architect and implement a SharePoint-based enterprise content management (ECM) system prototype for the client’s asset records management group. Stonebridge collaborated with both the client’s IT and business stakeholders to develop a viable prototype that showcased the impact of SharePoint’s capabilities and functionality across the enterprise using the client’s actual documents. Internal feedback on the prototype was extremely positive and the client is moving forward with plans to move the ECM system into production.
- A leading Tulsa, Okla.-based energy infrastructure company engaged Stonebridge to provide proactive monitoring of its Microsoft business intelligence (BI) and reporting systems environment, including databases and servers, via a SmartSource managed services contract. Stonebridge will assist the client by providing dedicated BI and database administration (DBA) resources to establish industry best practices related to the client’s BI assets and infrastructure. Stonebridge will collaborate with the client’s internal BI and DBA support teams to identify key performance management objectives to aid in the long-term viability of the BI and reporting systems environment. Specifically, Stonebridge will use PowerShell to gather metrics from multiple source systems into a SQL Server data warehouse and deliver self-service dashboards via PowerPivot. The client selected Stonebridge because of its depth of experience with the Microsoft BI stack.
- Stonebridge successfully completed development and deployment of ETL interfaces linking EMK3 marketing system with other business and operational data stores for a Ft. Worth, Texas-based upstream oil and gas company. The EMK3 deployment will enable the client to accurately forecast and track the value of all hydrocarbon transactions. This project follows Stonebridge’s successful implementation of the EMK3 Senergy oil and gas enterprise application for the client. In that project, Stonebridge designed and developed a custom process to collect, convert and load data from eight source systems, including the master well database, production accounting and reporting, and measurements database, into the EMK3 application. Previously, the client had engaged Stonebridge in a Phase Zero assessment to review and document current business processes and data integration involved with the usage and implementation of EMK3 in the organization.
- A diversified energy company based in Tulsa, Okla., engaged Stonebridge to develop a business intelligence (BI) solution to assist pipeline controllers in meeting federal reporting requirements related to pipeline safety know as Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The BI solution will enable the client’s pipeline controllers to track “alarm” signals from SCADA or similar systems indicating that a safety-related parameter is outside normal or expected operating conditions. The client chose Stonebridge for this project based on the companies’ longstanding business relationship over multiple successful projects.
- Stonebridge completed a custom SharePoint-based portal application for a leading provider of natural gas gathering, processing, transportation, and storage services. The portal is designed to allow secure electronic distribution of various reports to the client’s business partners. The portal provides partners with key production and accounting reports including daily production summarized by hour; monthly production summarized by day; volume statement; gathering and transportation invoices; and purchase and processing settlement statements and check details. Stonebridge also created a custom report publishing engine to ensure that reports are routed to the proper customer. The client selected Stonebridge because of its extensive experience building custom solutions using SharePoint.
- A large wholesale landscape nursery selected Stonebridge to enhance a custom application for generating custom product tags for commercial customers who sell the plants under their own brand. The client’s customers include some of the largest retail and home improvement chains in the country. Stonebridge developed the original .NET application in 2012, which has had a positive impact on the client’s extensive label-printing process. The new enhancements include support for differences between different divisions of the nursery, a mechanism for mass uploading of data, and redesign of the screens used to maintain the data displayed on the printed labels. The client chose Stonebridge because of its satisfaction with the custom application and Stonebridge’s status as a Microsoft Managed Gold Partner.
- A not-for-profit trade association dedicated to promoting commerce within a major East Coast river port engaged Stonebridge to upgrade its electronic information system for ship and cargo processing. The geospatial application monitors vessel speed and heading via a map-based interface built on IDV Solutions’ Visual Fusion geospatial data visualization tool. Stonebridge will upgrade the application to a newer version of Visual Fusion and incorporate new functionality to allow historical vessel positioning to be replayed in a time window.
- Stonebridge delivered a SharePoint-based corporate intranet portal for a Tulsa, Okla.-based regional financial institution. Stonebridge upgraded existing custom features and applications present in the client’s existing SharePoint intranet and deployed them in the 2010 SharePoint environment. Additionally, Stonebridge designed, developed and implemented custom branding for the intranet portal, including custom site templates and global navigation menus. The client selected Stonebridge in a competitive bidding process citing Stonebridge’s demonstrated specialization in SharePoint customization, branding and user experience.
- Stonebridge completed a Microsoft SQL Server database upgrade for a retail company based in Tulsa, Okla. The client’s database environments support its point-of-sale (POS) and data warehouse business processes. Following an assessment of the client’s current database environment, Stonebridge developed an upgrade plan and provided DBA expertise to successfully upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. The client selected Stonebridge because of its deep DBA knowledge and experience in database implementations, upgrades and data center migrations.
- Stonebridge completed a SharePoint upgrade for an Oklahoma-based electrical cooperative. The project involved the migration of the client’s SharePoint 2007 environment and content to SharePoint 2013. Stonebridge utilized the AutoSPInstaller open-source tool to install and configure the SharePoint 2013 environment and Metalogix’s content migration tool to move content to SharePoint. The client selected Stonebridge for this project because of its extensive experience in SharePoint consulting and implementations.
- A major Tulsa-based financial institution engaged Stonebridge to provide skilled business intelligence (BI) resources to accelerate the bank’s anti-money laundering (AML) effort by aggregating source system data and delivering it into the staging database of third-party AML software solution. This effort involves using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SSIS toolset to manage and move data between the bank’s source systems and the target database. According to the bank’s AML solution vendor, Stonebridge is delivering higher quality data on its initial pass than most banks have done historically. The client selected Stonebridge based on its previous work for the bank as well as the maturity of Stonebridge’s BI technical competency.
- A nationally known non-profit wellness organization renewed its SmartSource DBA agreement with Stonebridge for on-demand database administration managed services. Stonebridge supports the client’s Oracle environment with a range of DBA activities, including monitoring database performance, working with application development team to support new and enhanced functions, and coordinating with the client’s server support and security teams. Additionally, Stonebridge will upgrade the client’s database from Oracle 10g to 11g and implement a database disaster recovery plan. The client selected Stonebridge because of its performance under the prior SmartSource agreement as well as Stonebridge’s status as a thought leader in the DBA arena.
- 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 sixth 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.
About Stonebridge
Stonebridge is a business and technology services company focused on helping 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 their business performance. Founded in 1995 on a commitment to establishing high-value strategic alliances with our clients, Stonebridge has provided business solutions to organizations in all major industries, representing private, public, government, and non-profit entities. More information is available at www.sbconsulting.com.