ONE LAST THOUGHT...
April 29th 1995 was not a good day for Shell.
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That morning, a small group of Greenpeace activists boarded and occupied the Brent Spar, an obsolete oil-storage platform in the North Sea that Shell’ s UK arm was planning to sink. The activists brought with them members of the European media fully equipped to publicise the drama and announced that they were intent on blocking Shell’ s decision to junk the Spar. Greenpeace timed the operation for maximum effect— just one month before European Union environmental ministers were scheduled to meet and discuss North Sea pollution issues.
It was a public relations nightmare and it only got worse. Opposition to Shell’ s plans— and to Shell itself— mounted throughout Europe. In Germany, a boycott of Shell gas stations was organised and many of them were firebombed or otherwise vandalised. Hounded by the press and criticized by governments, Shell finally ceased plans to sink the Spar.
Shell’ s uncoordinated, reactionary and ultimately futile response to the Greenpeace protest revealed a lack of foresight and planning caused by fragmented data. The attack on the Spar should not have been a surprise to the company. Shell actually had all the information it needed to predict what would happen. The company’ s own security advisers identified the possibility that environmental activists might try to block the dumping. Greenpeace had a history of occupying environmentally sensitive structures. And the Spar was nothing if not an obvious target: weighing 14,500 tons, it was one of the largest offshore structures in the world and only one of a few North Sea platforms containing big storage tanks with toxic residues.
But even with these warning signs, Shell never saw the calamity coming. Unfortunately, their experience is all too common in the business world. Despite having all the correct information lined up, it’ s of very little use if it’ s not joined up.
It’ s highly unlikely that you own an oil rig. But believe it or not, your role as fleet operator has some clear synergies with those who do. Information from lease companies, licence inspections, fuel cards, garage advisories and telematics can be overwhelming. Having these different fragmented data sources can restrict you from seeing the bigger picture, or at best take a disproportionate amount of time to put everything together.
A 2012 report by McKinsey and Company found that workers spend 19 % of their work week searching for and collating information. In addition, a survey of middle managers conducted by Accenture revealed that 57 % of respondents said that going to different sources to compile information is a difficulty they face and 42 % said they use the wrong information at least once per week.
Does this sound familiar?
A clear message that’ s endorsed daily in our interactions with businesses is that the problem of fragmented data is a reallife challenge to fleet managers and one of the most common reasons that companies move their fleet management away from spreadsheets.
Getting a variety of data sources, even in a small business, to accurately match one another in terms of either the format or, more importantly, content, is a complex task if done manually. In most large organisations numerous departments will each hold fragments of information that needs to be assembled and manipulated by managers in order to be useful for making timely decisions. These decisions may affect your company from the fleet purchasing method you use to more general company policies.
The scary thing is, without a robust solution to join everything up, like Shell, you and your business could be facing some very difficult decisions. �
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