Epsis

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Nine Key Learnings from working in projects across 3 continents and 15 time zones.

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When the pandemic hit us, we had to change the way we delivered projects. As we have been preaching about digitalization for years, we in many ways took our own medicine: We digitized the business – changed the way we worked, and most importantly, our technology and the way it was used and delivered. And we met customers who were brave enough to say, “we want you to deliver this project 100% remotely.” So, we put together teams with participation from Norway, US, UK, and Australia.

There are of course a lot of learnings in such projects – and we are still on the learning curve! But here are some key learnings to share from our experience so far:

  1. First of all – you need to have a brave team! A team that understands the premises of the projects – the goals, the processes for how its run, and the transparency in the communication and steps. The team will potentially have to use new/different technology as everything is remote.
  2. The team needs to work all digital – no files in local storage. This enables us to build on each other’s work while someone is sleeping.
  3. The projects need to have a local sponsor – meaning someone in the client organization needs to secure that everyone is prioritizing to attend meetings and to perform tasks. This requires too much time if it’s left all to a remote project manager.
  4. You need to have a good introduction meeting to gain trust with the team – this has turned out to be easier as we have gone deeper into the pandemic.
  5. The team need to set clear boundaries from the start:
  • when can we meet?
  • when are we online/offline?
  • what expectations are there regarding other competing tasks at the office?
  • when will what be delivered?
  • how will we communicate?

6. Follow up meetings with the project sponsor needs to be held on a regular basis, to adjust, help and support the project manager.

7. Don’t underestimate context – and realize that it is harder to get the context right for e everyone when we are all digital. Allow for some extra time to get that right – it pays off!

8. Be flexible and generous and open about the challenges in remote working – that build trust and help take away the added complexity of the situation

9. A key learning is that it is much more can be accomplished in this digital delivery model than what we initially anticipated – in particular if we continue to be conscious of utilizing all tools that are available (such as video, co-editing documents, give/take control over applications)

As we are passionate about the future of work, our take from this type of projects is that traditional business boundaries need to be challenged moving forward – as operations literally can be done 24/7 from anywhere. For this we need new flexible operation models that can leverage the potential. Resulting in less need for travelling and even access to resources you normally wouldn’t be able to access. We are looking forward. #FutureOfWork

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Our product, Enify has now its own website

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Product

Our product, Enify has now its own website

enify.no

Your workday consists of a variety of activities, tools, and information. Often combined with a lot of different roles. We multitask.  There are many time thieves in that process,- switching between roles and tasks. Some say the workday looks like swiss cheese…

The solution is right around the corner,- with Enify a flexible solution for your team’s workday.

To be able to showcase who your team can get value from using Enify, and because we have switched to a subscription model we wanted to give Enify its very own website. Follow us on enify.no

2021 – Year of change

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Epsis News Page 3

Our CEO, Jan-Erik Nordtvedt, has written a few words about our change in Epsis:

2021 – Year of change

It has been a bit quiet from us for a while, but then it has also been a really tough year!

Like many others, we were doing well in a pre-pandemic world – with our heads deeply buried in yesterday’s business models. We had large projects in many corners of the world and were well set up for growth. We thought. Through almost twenty years of operation, we had helped our customers with digital transformation of their operations – and were proud of the projects we contributed to, and the results that gave our customers.

But we had to think completely differently when the pandemic hit us. In many ways, we took our own medicine – we digitized the business, changed the way we worked and not least our technology and the way it was used and delivered.

It has been very exciting and correspondingly challenging.

But now we are soon ready!

From having a niche product for oil and gas operations centers, we are now proud to soon be able to launch a much broader product – Enify – to help the knowledge worker find, use and share information in an efficient way in a hybrid workday. We believe that this is the working model of the future – and our goals is to help provide the opportunity for people to be able to work with anything from anywhere.

Delivered as a cloud solution on Microsoft Azure.

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Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

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Epsis News Page 3

Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

Meeting virtually became a real problem overnight when Covid-19 hit us all. Epsis together with Equinor, Woodside and with solid support from Innovation Norway wanted to take a closer look at the problem; – “How to create good solutions for integrated teams who work from different locations and meet in a virtual space to ensure a good understanding of the situation and operations.”  The Virtual Operations Center concept was born

Operations center environments are often characterized by the following:

Shift work
24/7 operation
A lot of information to process
Several operations to be followed up more or less simultaneously
Switch between different tasks (analysis, monitoring, project and events)

Throughout the project, together with operative personnel, we have looked at the way of working in various centers (Emergency, Subsea, Logistics, drilling and well, geo operations and telecommunications). Furthermore, we have looked at requirements for further development of Epsis’ software system to be able to support operations regardless of location. The software has been developed based on the needs of operative personnel who work in and in connection with the centers.

Challenges: lack of digital effectiveness and structure

    70+ applications are used daily in medium-sized organizations

  • Workers switch between tasks 20+ times a day
  • Daily work consists of several interruptions from various technologies and through unstructured collaboration
  • The number of available screens is challenging when gaining situational awareness
  • Time is valuable, and wastes of time are notable

The project needs have resulted in the following functional areas in the application:

1. Screen control

The number of screens and screen layouts vary greatly, and in the centers with large screen walls, managing information takes time. It is therefore useful to have an application to manage this

2. Information collections

The number of applications and clicks within various applications to find relevant information for managing a task or a facility is time-consuming. Remembering where things are located/long paths means that you sometimes do not retrieve relevant information from one system or that you store copies locally. It saves time for employees to have one application to go to to find everything they need across documents, processes, tasks and applications

3. Task switching

The everyday working life of these operational environments is made up of structured tasks and more event-oriented tasks that occasionally interrupt a structured task. It takes time to find focus between tasks, and it takes time to find the information you need to perform different types of tasks. It is useful to have a system where everything you need to perform a task is available.

4. Shared understanding of the situation

Everyday work consists of ensuring that everyone who works together can quickly achieve an equal understanding of the situation for various tasks and events. For this, you would like to have environments with shared screens and of course the employees’ own work area. For this, it can be useful to be able to share more than one information element and, not least, that the information that belongs together is placed on the screen surfaces so that it is easy for the recipients to absorb. Enify can help with this.

Result

Find relevant information – across systems
Find information and quickly change the focus – easy to switch between tasks.
Sharing information – sharing sets of links/information
Have one system for navigating many – with a single keystroke
Smart multitasking – Dividing users screens into layouts allows one to work with several applications simultaneously
Always have the same work surface – no matter where you log on from

  1. One team saved 30 min per day.
  2. One team managed to keep the operation running 100% when they had to close the center and move to home office.
  3. The cost of building a virtual operation center vs. a physical one is much more affordable.

Contact us

Get in touch, to know more.

We are here to help you succeed!

Corona situation (Covid-19)

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Corona situation (Covid-19)

Epsis is closely following the global situation in connection with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We as our customers have taken our own measures to keep our staff as safe as possible, and most of us are now working from home. The IT industry is central in keeping some of the wheels rolling in our communities. This also applies to the services that Epsis are providing. We take our social responsibility seriously and work to best meet government requirements whether we are based in Norway, UK, Australia and USA, protect society’s most vulnerable and at the same time deliver on our commitment to our customers. We are grateful to all those working to mitigate the effects of the virus and out thoughts are with all who are being personally affected.

Epsis support & teamwork

We have, in recent weeks experienced that our customers have had an impressive ability to quickly find good solutions for maintaining production and capacity, while meeting the requirements of the authorities. As a result, Epsis remains fully operational and will (for the time being) continuing to provide our full range of support and services in all time zones. Our staff is working from home, in line with the most recent advices of the governments (in Norwegian, UK, US and Australian), while maintaining the same levels of professional services and availability as always.

We have long experience in working remotely without compromising the productivity and our delivery capability. We are used to handling demanding assignments, and as experts we also quickly get up to speed and become productive. We feel we have established the right mechanisms to assist our customers in this demanding situation. If anyone gets sick, we have backup routines to take over the support function. Our team is dedicated to help our customers on remote operations. Please contact help@epsis.com if you have any technical questions.

Client relationship

Our customer relationship is very important to us and we want to help in any way we can. As well as using email correspondence we are happy to talk with you on video conference or telephone. Our team is currently helping customers effectively set up virtual remote operations centres and adapt new ways of working into the operations.

Ways of working & IT security

We use Teams and Yammer as our internal communication platform and start every morning with a virtual coffee meeting. We find it important to talk on a regular basis to lift the team spirit and share tips on how to work smarter remotely. Today we got a reminder: Unfortunately, there are people with bad intentions using this situation to try to get into people’s and businesses system. Remember – Do not click on any links or attachments unless you are 100% sure. If you are wondering call and ask the sender before opening.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns regarding solutions and deliveries on Jan-Erik Nordtvedt / +47 55 92 57 50,- Together is better, even remotely.

Thank you and stay safe, the Epsis Team

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