At a Critical Crossroads in Your Business?
Choose Energy Decisions Group and Decide With Confidence.
CUSTOMIZED BUSINESS RESEARCH AND DECISION SUPPORT SOLUTIONS
We believe we can meet the bulk of our clients’ information and decision support needs through our cost-effective, ready-to-go, off-the-shelf business intelligence reports. But, we realize there are times when your business challenges and questions present unique circumstances and demand a customized approach. Perhaps our growing reports library simply doesn’t offer the report you need. Or, perhaps the report you bought prompted you to ask new questions that can only be answered through additional research!
Whatever the case may be, you may discover that we are better positioned to support your decision-making needs with a customized business intelligence engagement. Allow us to design a bespoke research query for you, and we will apply our unique methodology to get the answers you need so you can Decide With Confidence. We offer broad-based expertise in the energy, oil and gas sectors, and our tailored solutions can lead to any number of beneficial outputs for your team.
Give us a call today. We would love to learn about your challenges, questions, and the decisions you face in your business. No inquiry is too broad or too narrow. We’re eager to walk in your shoes and explore whether there may be an opportunity for us to answer your questions or help you choose the right path forward.
Our Research Methodology: A Unique Approach to Business Intelligence
If it seems like we harp on our unique methodology and approach to doing research, that’s because we do… We know that our primary research-based, “straight-to-the-source” approach to answering your questions sets us apart from the other energy business intelligence providers and even the global “big box” management consulting firms.
Our true expertise lies in our ability to network among senior-level energy, oil and gas executives – your peers and competitors who are living, breathing and working the same business environment, challenges and decisions you encounter each day. We identify executives with hard-to-find expertise, data, information, innovative business practices, lessons learned, avoidable pitfalls, and valuable insights. We fill that all-important independent, third-party, “middleman” role that enables us to access information you can’t otherwise get. We convince executives to share this information in a mutually beneficial information exchange, which may be facilitated by any number of tools, including surveys, executive interviews, discussion panels, workshops, site visits, and field-based ride-alongs. We then pore over this information; synthesize key findings; and transform what we’ve learned into succinct, practical, digestible, actionable deliverables to enable you to hit the ground running and quickly propel your business forward.
Rely on us for your business intelligence needs. We will apply this primary research-based, straight-to-the-source methodology to get answers to virtually any question, business challenge or decision point you can throw at us!
Broad-Based Expertise
We apply our unique research methodology to solve clients’ problems in a host of energy industry sub-sectors and function areas within those sub-sectors. While our team has in-depth knowledge and experience in many areas, we would love to talk to you about your needs even if they fall outside these areas, as it’s likely we can still use our approach to get the information you need.
Energy Sectors of Focus:
- Oil & Gas (upstream, midstream and downstream)
- Integrated oil
- Petroleum refiners
- Fuel transport
- Gas distribution, marketing and sales
- Gas stations
- Natural gas extraction
- Coal gas manufacture
- Power and Utilities
- Electrical power
- Electricity generation
- Electric power distribution and sales
- Coal
- Nuclear
- Renewables
- Alternative energy
- Sustainable energy (hydroelectric power, wind power, solar power)
- Alternative fuels (manufacture, distribution, sale)
- Electrical power
Function Areas of Focus:
- Exploration and Production
- Geology
- Land/Resource Acquisition and Management, Contracting and Procurement
- Safety and Environment
- Processing
- Transportation
- Distribution
- Sales
- Marketing, PR, and Media Relations
- Public Affairs
- Corporate Communications
- Human Resources
- Government Affairs
- Facilities, Engineering and Construction
- Legal
- Regulatory and Compliance
- Risk Management
- Finance, Accounting and Tax
- Information Technology and Security
Our “Typical” Customized Research Engagement
For us, there is no typical research engagement. That’s one of the advantages of working with a boutique firm that offers bespoke business intelligence solutions. Some projects may have us surveying or interviewing our clients’ employees; or, we may be asked to collect information, data, and insights from our clients’ customers, suppliers or other key stakeholders. More often, we’re asked to gather information directly from senior-level energy, oil and gas executives. Whatever the case may be, our client projects are likely to follow a broad-strokes pattern such as this:
- Getting to Know One Another
- Initial conversation(s) to help us understand the nuances of your queries, as well as your goals and objectives.
- Identify the key players, including key stakeholders and points of contact on our team and yours.
- We’ll also help you learn more about who we are and how we work, and make sure you’re beginning to feel comfortable that we may be the right business partner for you.
- Proposal
- Hash out the details – outline project methodology, timelines, fees, goals and objectives, etc.
- Identify roles and responsibilities of team members on both sides.
- If we’ve done our job right, proposal submission is hopefully just a formality that outlines in detail everything we’ve discussed to this point!
- Project Kick-Off
- Further meetings and/or calls, as needed, to discuss the project’s early stages and any new points of interest or concern that may have arisen since the Proposal stage.
- Development of project tools (surveys, interview guides, etc.) – a back-and-forth process, typically with strong input/direction/guidance, and of course final approval, from your team.
- Information Collection
- Executive/Supplier/Customer/Stakeholder networking: This is where we really roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. Typically the biggest timeline question mark of any engagement falls here.
- Building buy-in: Here is where we really earn our keep. We work tirelessly to identify and convince those in the know to contribute invaluable insights to our information exchange.
- Analysis, Key Findings and Deliverables
- Armed with an abundance of information, we synthesize our findings.
- Transform what we’ve learned into deliverables that enable you to communicate our project’s work to your key stakeholders and sow the seeds for change in your organization.
- Project Wrap-Up
- Deliverables review and modifications/changes, as needed.
- Final presentations, meetings, workshops, site visits to deliver findings/results.
- Ongoing Support
- We’re available to provide ongoing support as you internalize findings from our work together and implement changes in your organization!
What Can We Do For You?
The short answer? More than we can fit on this page! Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Pinpoint new or untapped market opportunities
- Understand market forces and how they might impact your business
- Identify pitfalls and learn from your peers’ and competitors’ experiences and mistakes
- Make operational improvements that impact the bottom line
- Outline new strategies for growth
- Perform competitor and supplier profiles and assessments
- Conduct customer feedback and perception studies
- Benchmark your performance against that of your competitors
- Analyze budget, staffing, infrastructure, asset and resource allocations
- Examine cycle times, timelines, and other key performance indicators
- Benchmark technology transformation and next generation technologies
- Perform cost structure assessments
- Conduct feasibility studies for new pipeline development proposals
- Competitive assessments of new market entrants
- Perform fuel distribution market benchmarking
- Benchmark customer loyalty programs
- Improve materials management in large capital projects and ongoing operations
Deliverables
When it comes to customized business intelligence solutions, our clients often have difficulty envisioning all the different types of deliverables we can create to help them get the most from our work together. Project deliverables are critical and should not be overlooked or glossed over during project planning. Well-conceived deliverables can be a true catalyst for change in your organization, whereas poorly designed deliverables can bring a project’s momentum to a grinding halt.
So, we thought we’d share a short list of just a few of the many types of deliverables that our clients find most helpful in translating our work into action and change in their organizations:
- Slide decks to complement or form the basis of your presentations
- Gap analyses (budgets, staffing, operational timelines, cycle times, marketing plans, infrastructure investments, assets, etc.)
- Executive insights assessments (interviews, surveys, etc. to identify market trends, strategic foresight, operational planning trends, etc.)
- Market feedback assessments and profiles (suppliers, customers, other stakeholders)
- Employee/team member surveys, profiles, interview results and databanks
- Customer surveys, profiles, interview results and databanks
- Evidence-backed action plans
- Templates, forms and procedural documents (e.g., SOPs)
- Marketing plans
- Human resource needs assessments
- Customer demographics profiles
- Product/service profiles
- In-depth reports of key findings, innovative business practices, etc.
- Data analyses / databases / data analytics tools