Today, Oildex, has announced the release of a new product entitled OpenTicket. The Payables Research Team at Ardent Partners met up with Oildex Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Donaldson, to discuss the new release, the strategy behind the new name, and some of the new features and processing improvements. Below is a recap of our discussion.
Oildex, which is headquartered in Denver Colorado, and has six offices in the US and Canada, has focused on the financial supply chain in oil and gas since its founding in 1999, and has built a suite of solutions designed to manage not only electronic invoicing (eInvoicing), but also integrated field operations management software made specifically for oilfield suppliers. For those less familiar with the oil and gas industry, a service provider (supplier) will go and perform work on specific drill sites and fill out a paper ticket, called a field ticket, which most frequently is two pieces of paper with a piece of carbon copy paper between them. They usually keep the original for themselves and leave the carbon copy with a site supervisor as proof that the work has been completed. This field ticket then becomes the basis for an invoice. It is a particularly cumbersome, manual, paper-based process of creating, delivering (often across many different field sites), and approving these tickets. The new solution OpenTicket, will help to automate this process by allowing service providers to submit their field tickets electronically on mobile devices. OpenTicket connects directly with the Oildex OpenInvoice platform which allows for improved data transparency and visibility for both the service provider and the buyer’s AP department.
Background on OpenTicket Solution
Field Ticket, which launched in 2016, was originally offered as an add-on to Oildex’s OpenInvoice solution. The solution has been updated and rebranded from “OpenInvoice Field Ticket” to a standalone solution called “OpenTicket.” Speaking with Mike Donaldson, Chief Marketing Officer from Oildex, he said one of the main reasons for offering OpenTicket as a standalone solution was because some of the Oildex customers were only using the field ticket portion of the solution.
Another major change to the solution is that Oildex is now incorporating service provider functionality into the product. The original packaging of the product was focused on the operators, and only had operator functionality. OpenTicket provides everything that operators and service providers will need to digitize field tickets. Previously, service providers were able to use the Oildex network, but if they wanted more advanced functionality, they had to work with one of Oildex’ partners.
Mobile Application for Service Providers
OpenTicket Mobile is a dedicated mobile application that is one of the major key additions to the new solution. Donaldson discussed how Oildex’s goal was to have service providers create their field tickets as soon as the work was completed. While the original solution did have a browser-based supplier portal where service providers could submit their tickets, the vast majority of the work is completed in the field at drill sites, and service providers aren’t able to submit their tickets until they return to their offices. The new mobile app, uses a “store & forward” mechanism, so that service providers can create tickets anytime, anywhere, even when they are offline. The tickets will be stored when offline, and when the provider gets back to an internet connection, the field tickets get automatically uploaded into the cloud and then routed to either the service providers office for approval, or directly to the operator. For service providers that have to travel to different drill sites, and then back to their own home site, this process will speed up the time it takes to get the field ticket information to the operators.
Drilling and Completions Functionality
Oildex also announced the addition of drilling & completions functionality to the OpenTicket solution that should be ready for all customers by July. This process is unique to the oil and gas industry where different drill site supervisors are able to collect, analyze, and process all the field ticket information from their service providers. Site supervisors (often called Company Men), many of whom live on each specific drill site, are required to issue morning reports on different technical information, operational usage, information of different suppliers working on the site, and cost estimates that have to do with their site. Oildex OpenTicket, will soon have integration with many of the industry’s morning reporting systems. Site supervisors will receive field tickets from the suppliers via the mobile app, and will have exact cost information that can be folded into the morning reports. The data entry is done by the service providers themselves as they submit the tickets. The field ticket information gets submitted into a command center view within OpenTicket for the operators and the data is automatically integrated into the system. These operators can view and analyze all of the ticket information that has come in from the service providers. From there, the information can be exported into the specific morning reporting systems.
Final Thoughts
With the introduction of OpenTicket, Oildex seems to have figured out a solution to a problem that has plagued the oilfield services industry since the very beginning. Mike Donaldson said the entire goal with this new solution is to be able to process field tickets as quickly as possible so as to speed up payments to providers. Oildex was able to leverage functionality that already existed in their invoicing solution and apply it to the field ticket side of the business. Oildex has streamlined the field ticket process by offering reconciliation with price books and purchase/work orders, added support for auto-approval scenarios that automatically “flip the ticket” into an invoice, and applied AP workflow and approval capabilities to the field ticket automation process. Previously, it could take anywhere from 4-9 weeks to manually process a payment. With the new functionality, buyers can now “pay on the ticket” itself, and make payments almost instantly. This (along with a new Supply Chain Finance program which we covered here last month) should help improve supplier relationships for Oildex customers and help them grow within the oil and gas industry.
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