Best Practices for Oil & Gas Conference

A collaboration of SAP, ASUG, and The Eventful Group, Best Practices for Oil & Gas is the leading SAP oil and gas conference of 2013. It offers a unique experience for upstream, midstream, downstream, and oil field professionals to unite with their peers, preeminent thought leaders, subject matter experts, and solution providers all in one location for interactive training and networking. Best Practices for Oil & Gas will take place October 6-9, 2013, in Dallas, Texas. We hope you will join us for this highly anticipated training event!

Through conversations with our trusted advisors and focus group discussions, we have identified a list of hot topics as the most pressing challenges for the SAP Oil & Gas community today. Presentations should align within the tracks and consider these hot topics details and the conference theme: Meeting the Innovation Challenge for Safe, Reliable, and Sustainable Operations.

Abstracts may include case studies, lessons learned, strategies, tips & tricks, and best practices.

Capital and Spend Effectiveness
Capital spend in the industry is growing and must exceed $19 trillion over the next two decades to meet world energy demand. Organizations must focus on enterprise portfolio management, effective project management, and optimization of procurement processes.

Seeking papers on best practices and experiences with:

• Planning and management of large capital programs from cradle to grave including cash flow management
• Management of contingent/contractor workforces
• Transitioning from projects to operations
• Managing large volumes of vendor and material master data records
• Improving the visibility and accuracy of spend data
• Integration and streamlined execution with suppliers

Integrated Digital Oilfield Operations
Success in the upstream oil and gas business depends on well-orchestrated monitoring, surveillance, decision making, and execution. Companies thus need to reinforce and close the decision-making loop across all dimensions impacting performance.

Seeking papers on best practices and experiences with:

• Field data collection, validation, surveillance, and notification processes from field systems and engineering applications
• Integration of production, maintenance, and engineering for improved planning and optimum decision making
• Integration and simplification of business between owner operators and  oilfield service companies
• Best practices for revenue, land, and the financial functions within hydrocarbon accounting
• Design and management of integrated data models and hierarchies

Hydrocarbon Supply Chain
The hydrocarbon supply chain is affected by dynamic variables such as price, demand, and delays. Business success can be achieved only by perfecting management and execution at every stage across the supply chain.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• Commodity procurement, sales, and risk management
• Improving visibility and support of refining and plant operations
• Planning, scheduling, and settlement across all elements of the supply chain
• Sales planning and execution for all hydrocarbon sales channels, such as bulk, wholesale, and retail
• Compliance reporting (i.e., Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC))

Operational Integrity
Due to the inherent risks associated with hydrocarbon production and processes, there is need for continuous diligence and focus on improving safety and reducing this operating risk. This focus on operational integrity drives greater situational awareness, improves process safety, reduces environmental impact, and goes beyond compliance in operations.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• Auditable monitoring of key risk indicators, policy and regulatory compliance
• Management of the key risks to people, the environment, and assets for improved process safety
• Maintaining the structural and mechanical integrity of assets to perform as designed
• Management of emissions, product and regulatory compliance, and hazardous substances
• Training, certification, and maintenance of security of both internal and external 3rd party resources
• Identifying risks associated with field failures and safety issues in master data
• Management of linear assets
• Incident management and management of change

People and Talent
Talent is a true competitive advantage today and critical when aligning business strategy and execution. Best-run organizations achieve profitable growth by leveraging their talent and out-innovating the competition.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• HR and payroll processing for better workforce data and legal compliance
• Identification, development, motivation, and retention of needed talent
• Time management  and reporting for improved resource effectiveness
• Workforce planning and balancing against company strategy
• Management of contract labor
• Knowledge development and management with training and certifications

Finance
In times of increased volatility, agile financial organizations are better capable of managing enterprise performance and responding to market and business changes.  Ensuring regulatory compliance and effective risk management that meets or exceeds financial expectations and delivers superior service to the business is an essential part of any successful enterprise.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• Management of financial performance to execute organizational strategies and control costs
• Fast, accurate, compliant, and efficient close process
• Managing cash, liquidity, and risk
• Risk and compliance management
• Overcoming the struggle with financial reporting
• Managing mergers, acquisitions and organizational change
• Migration from classic G/L to new G/L
• Retirement and transfer of assets
• Managing audits of increased complexity
• Handling DODD FRANK and other transparency requirements

IT Operations and Project Delivery
IT has been compared to Oxygen and something that is taken for granted in the wake of recent cyber-attacks that have disrupted a company’s IT. In today’s global economy, businesses need to react more rapidly to changing business priorities or unforeseen opportunities. They need to cope with the increasingly fast pace. And they need to react fast under budget constraints and adhere to more progressive requirements on availability, security, and compliance.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• Using application lifecycle management (ALM) best practices, methods, and services based on IT infrastructure library (ITIL)
• Monitoring all network assets to drive integrated infrastructure and application lifecycle
• Aligning the portfolio and manage projects to drive innovation efficiently
• Aligning service-desk operations with service level agreements (SLAs), resolve SLA incidents fast, and adopt ITIL best practices to meet evolving business goals
• Tracking IT costs and risk and map risks and compliance activities to business impact
• Managing SAP documentation – a library-sized problem
• Business impacts of an out-source support model
• Breaking down organizational design barriers to effectively utilize SAP in the business
• Getting out of the ongoing cycle of “re-implementation” of SAP
• Reducing the business costs of supporting SAP – from all angles
• Measuring organizational maturity of SAP utilization to gauge ability to share knowledge
• Managing organizational change for new implementations
• Designing a business organization that can manage SAP upgrades and enhancement packs
• Managing the business selection of IT solutions to be more SAP centric
• Best practices for training
• Quality assurance in testing: both new process testing and regression testing
• Designing a COE that serves the business, retains knowledge and is sustainable
• Implementing a sustainable solution with Governance and change management built-in

Technology Solutions
Oil and gas companies have always seen themselves as technology companies and they use it to drive innovation. Those firms that leverage the latest technology solutions will enable the real-time enterprise, empower new user experiences, and unwire their businesses to the delight of their customers, partners, and employees.

Seeking best practices and experiences with:

• 3D and geospatial visualization of operations and maintenance of assets
• Real-time and predictive analytics, business intelligence, and performance and risk management
• Zeroing in on the right information at every level of your enterprise by managing your critical data with scalability, trust, and unmatched performance
• Developing applications and innovation rapidly in a mobile, always-on world of collaborative business networks for secure, cloud-scale applications
• Unwiring your employees, customers, and partners with proven, highly rated,
• mobile solutions
• Using real-time, consumer-grade software to increase productivity and competitiveness that results in innovative consumer applications.
• Streamlining applications, analytics, planning, and predictive and sentiment analysis on a single platform based on in-memory technology

Best Practices for Oil & Gas is dedicated to providing thought-leadership, subject-matter expertise, leading strategies, and best practices focused specifically on SAP solutions for oil and gas.

Key Event Features

• Keynote presentations by top oil and gas professionals, innovators, and key
• SAP personnel
• Case studies featuring first-hand, innovative strategies implemented at oil and gas organizations in upstream, midstream, downstream, and oil field services
• Subject-specific workshops to help you dive deep into the subject-matter that interests you most
• Extensive networking with hundreds of oil and gas professionals and leading
• experts
• Roundtables around key areas of interest
• Exhibits from top technology and service partners
• Opportunity to collaborate with members of the ASUG Oil & Gas Special Interest Group and experts behind SAP`s Industry Value Network for Oil & Gas
• ASUG Oil & Gas SIG Community Lounge — SIG leadership team available for questions and advice

Who Should Attend
Best Practices for Oil & Gas is geared toward oil and gas leaders, managers, directors, and other professionals involved with the decision-making process:

• VP Operations
• VP Production
• Asset Managers
• Operations Managers
• Production Managers
• Enterprise Architects
• CEO / CIO / COO / CTO / CFO
• Team Leads
• Directors of IT, HR, Engineering, Financial, Projects, Drilling, Production,
• Supply Chain, etc.
• SAP Support Leads

What You`ll Take Away
This conference is the ideal environment for members of the oil and gas industry to learn about critical SAP solutions. Dozens of industry leaders will be on-hand to illustrate the steps required to drive real value and ROI from your SAP investment.

• Expertise from your peers and subject-matter experts who have solved real problems with SAP solutions for oil and gas
• New relationships with key oil and gas professionals from North America
• and beyond
• Tips and strategies to enhance current SAP initiatives
• Ideas, opportunities, and trends to help you solve complex issues you are
• facing today
• Forward-thinking techniques and tangible best practices
• Practical, easy-to-apply advice and solutions to immediately improve your
• bottom line

Who You’ll Meet

• SAP software developers and experienced users
• Members of the ASUG Oil & Gas Special Interest Groups
• Experts behind SAP`s Industry Value Network for Oil & Gas including product and service partners focused on SAP for Oil & Gas user needs
• Key decision makers from the top oil and gas companies from around the world
• Users of SAP for Oil & Gas solutions
• Hundreds of professionals from the oil and gas industry including upstream, midstream, downstream, and oil field services

Through intense scrutiny of the 2012 conference evaluation results, conversations with our trusted advisors, and focus group discussions with SAP users across country, we have extracted the following "hot topics" as the most pressing challenges for the SAP Oil & Gas community in 2013.

• Capital and Spend Effectiveness
• Integrated Digital Oilfield Operations
• Hydrocarbon Supply Chain
• Operational Integrity
• People and Talent