Enterprise Data Warehouse

Seplat Energy gains better business insights and drives growth with Wragby’s enterprise data warehouse

Through the lens of Microsoft analytics, Seplat Energy’s journey has been nothing short of remarkable. From oilfield monitoring and predictive maintenance to Data-powered exploration and production, Wragby worked closely with Seplat Energy to empower faster decision making and reduce costs while increasing operational excellence.

As a Nigeria-based international energy company, Seplat Energy has carved a significant niche in the Nigerian oil and gas sector. With operations spanning the prolific Niger Delta region, Seplat manages 7 oil and gas blocks, including the esteemed OMLs 4, 38, and 41. What sets Seplat apart is not just its impressive footprint, but its commitment to powering over a million customers and businesses across Nigeria. With a production capacity exceeding 47,758 bpd, Seplat showed its stability and operational excellence. But beyond the numbers, Seplat’s ethos revolves around technological innovation, safety, and environmental responsibility, positioning it as a true leader in Nigeria’s energy landscape. the transformation story of Seplat Energy stands as a testament to resilience, innovation, and unwavering commitment.

The Business Challenge

With great success comes unique challenges. Seplat Energy, like any visionary organization, faced the daunting task of managing a vast array of data from disparate sources. From on-premises systems to Azure platforms and third-party applications, the data deluge posed a significant obstacle. The challenge lay in consolidating this diverse dataset into a unified, authoritative source to ensure data quality and consistency.

The major business challenges highlighted were:

• The difficulty for users to retrieve and analyze information on hand from multiple data sources, data owners and departments.
• The need to have data consistency for more effective decision-making.
• Faster access to information on-demand to have better performance.
• The ability for its Management to evaluate business operations and performance by measuring, managing, and monitoring the business on an ongoing basis.
• Ability to monitor production patterns and trends.
• The need for advanced analytics in the near future.

To address these business challenges head-on, Wragby engaged the Seplat team in an analytics immersion workshop where we showcased the capabilities of Azure Synapse, SQL Data Warehouse, Power BI, Data Lake, and Machine Learning. The solution’s benefits, including seamless integration with existing Microsoft technology, piqued Seplat Energy’s interest as they envisioned building future machine learning models using data from our proposed solution, the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). Our proposal leveraged the Microsoft Cloud Scale Analytics platform, consolidating historical, current, and future data from various systems into a unified repository.

This partnership ignited a spark of possibility. Together, Seplat Energy and Wragby embarked on a quest to transform data into actionable insights. The vision was clear: “empower Seplat to make informed decisions, drive operational excellence, and shape the future of Nigeria’s energy sector”.

The Solution Implemented

As a proud Microsoft partner with advanced specialization in Analytics, Wragby designed a comprehensive Microsoft Cloud-based analytics solution for Seplat. At its core lies the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), a digital hub where diverse data streams converge. Wragby meticulously integrated historical reservoir data, production metrics, financial records, and safety protocols into this unified repository. The EDW, equipped with advanced data integration, transformation, and modeling capabilities, ensures accurate and consistent data alignment with business objectives.

The project was inclusive, led by our all-female data team. Leveraging Microsoft technologies, we deployed the solution by combining SQL Server with Azure cloud scale-out capabilities, which allows flexible computing adjustments. Data is stored in Azure Geo-redundant storage with disaster recovery in secondary geographical region to guarantee high availability in case of an outage in the primary region. It also automatically backs up active (unpaused) databases at regular intervals using Azure Storage Snapshots. Azure Data Factory, integrated within Synapse LogicApps, ingests data from diverse sources like Excel, SharePoint, Azure SQL Databases, and on-premises SQL Server.

We enabled Seplat Energy to be more data driven by deploying the unique capabilities of the Microsoft Azure Data platform as a key differentiation against AWS Amazon Redshift, Google Query, Snowflake and Teradata. Azure Synapse Analytics ticked all the boxes. Our approach followed the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), emphasizing structured and iterative progress beyond technology—a shared vision of success.

The Impact – Revenue soared, but impact transcended numbers

The figures were compelling: a 35% increase in revenue and annual earnings of $1,061.3 million in by the next financial year. However, the real significance was beyond the numbers. It resonated in boardroom meetings where decisions became informed and strategic, driven by data instead of guesswork.

“The EDW solution implemented by Wragby played the pivotal role in Seplat’s journey towards operational excellence and strategic foresight for growth. The solution empowered Seplat in proactive decision-making, reducing data errors, enhancing security measures, and fostering collaboration, Wragby’s EDW solutions propelled Seplat towards a new height of success”.

By productively deploying the solution, Seplat is now able to proactively get insights which enhanced its decision-making process by almost 60%, improved data quality and accuracy, reducing data error by about 80%, enhanced security measures, such as encryption and access control, to protect sensitive data, Enhanced team sharing and collaborate, save cost of training its data team across multiple solutions up to an estimate of about $100,000.00.

Tomorrow Beckons

By adopting a cloud-first approach in our Analytics solutions, our team has facilitated meaningful interactions with leaders and stakeholders across various business verticals. Our co-sell ready solution enables us to serve more customers in Nigeria’s oil & Gas industry, from upstream to downstream, Wragby is helping customers adopt the cloud to reduce operating cost, streamline processes and drive efficiencies. By adopting the latest big data, IoT, AI and machine learning technologies, we are helping customers accelerate their ability to innovate.

Today, Seplat is exploring predictive maintenance bots with an annual Managed services renewal with Wragby. Envisioning a greener energy landscape, Seplat is part of a global movement, orchestrated by Microsoft Analytics. Wragby, as an Azure Managed Services Provider, remains a trusted partner offering ongoing support.

The transformation of Seplat Energy isn’t just about data; it’s about legacy. It’s about leaving a mark on Nigeria’s energy canvas – a mark that says, “We cared, we innovated, and we made a difference.” Together, Seplat and Wragby are not just transforming data, we are shaping the future of Nigeria’s energy sector, one insight at a time.