Stonebridge Sees Its Strongest Year of Growth as ERP Transformation and Energy M&A Accelerate

We are excited to announce that 2024 has been the strongest year ever for Stonebridge Consulting. We want to thank our valued clients who have made such a successful year possible as we collaborated on diverse digital transformation projects. 2024 has also been a tremendous year of growth as we expanded the Stonebridge team across business advisory and technology services, further strengthening our core competencies to provide strategic digital transformation action plans and execute at the tactical level.

As a solution provider, Stonebridge has also grown through innovation with data as a service products like ORBit. And across the board, Stonebridge's strong growth continues to be fueled by the synergies generated through integration with our sister company, Sierra Digital, enabling us to tackle the largest digital transformation projects with speed, agility, and a global presence.

Let's explore the themes driving Stonebridge's incredible growth trajectory.

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Simplifying the Journey to SAP S/4HANA

SAP is sunsetting support for its legacy ERP Central Component (ECC), which makes upgrading to its latest ERP technology, S/4HANA essential for many energy companies. It offers better performance and an improved user experience by integrating real time data processing, AI, machine learning, and IoT on the HANA in-memory database.

Stonebridge has stepped up to assist the energy industry with its S/4 upgrade challenge. Our SAP advisory and technology services include full system conversion, new ERP implementation, and selective data transition. Stonebridge’s ability to strategically plan large digital transformations then execute the upgrade and data conversion provides Stonebridge clients with differentiated capabilities found nowhere else.

Stonebridge is helping our clients avoid costly customization and a high level of tech debt by embracing the S/4 “clean core” implementation model. Instead of modifying standard, out-of-the-box ?ERP modules, client-specific customization is shifted to the SAP Business Technology Platform to future proof and contain costs while enabling smooth upgrade of core S/4 modules. We deploy our own accelerators alongside the SAP Activate framework to ensure best fit to standard and accelerate project delivery

Stonebridge’s SAP ERP competencies have led to multiple projects this year as the impending deadline looms. We are proud to have been a part of S/4 upgrades at leading multinational energy companies and independent producers alike, and we expect demand for our advisory and technology services to grow even more in the next year.

In addition to core ERP, Stonebridge is providing value added project management for the numerous energy specific software solutions around the edge of a SAP upgrade. Our strategic competency in software implementation and upgrades ensures data flow and process continuity across the digital oilfield ecosystem, including the Peloton suite of products (e.g., WellView, ProdView, SiteView), Quorum Software (e.g., Quorum Land, Energy Components, FlowCal), IFS/P2 Energy Solutions (e.g., Bolo, iLandMan, Merrick), and many others.

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Accelerating M&A Integration

The uptick in industrywide consolidation has only accentuated the many challenges of integrating newly merged companies or a bolt on acquisition. From the moment a purchase and sales agreement is signed, buyers must move swiftly to put a transaction services agreement in place, manage the integration of people, technology, and data with the buyer, and avoid TSA costs that can quickly mount into millions or hundreds of millions for larger deals. Importantly M&A integration that faulters at any point can delay capturing the synergy that drove the deal in the first place.

Because of Stonebridge's energy industry business acumen and technology skillsets, we have been the preferred partner for many of this year's biggest M&A integrations, another theme in our explosive growth trajectory. Starting at PSA, we help clients craft TSAs that better work in their favor, enabling TSA costs to be rapidly scaled down as key integration milestones are completed. Stonebridge then deploys our leading project management and change management playbook, process accelerators and technology solutions to accelerate time to integration and synergy.

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Expanding Practice Areas

Key areas of growth in the Stonebridge team bolster our ability to deliver on major software implementations, upgrades, and the M&A integration mentioned above. This includes volumetrics and production accounting, ERP project management, master data, and data transformation specialists. We have also seen strong growth in managed services, most notably land and lease administration.

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Doubling Down on Innovation

Stonebridge's 20 year track record of managing digital transformation projects in the energy industry has led to the development of numerous process accelerators that cut project time up to 50%. We recognized a valuable opportunity existed to focus innovation on people intensive data conversion, a primarily manual process required for ERP implementation and M&A integration that can account for as much as half of project time and costs, culminating in the launch of ORBit this year.

With many one size fits all data as a service (DaaS) products on the market, the time was right to introduce the only energy specific DaaS solution that ships with more than 50 pre-built connectors to commercial software data sources, including SAP PRA and JVA, Oracle Oil & Gas, and many others in the digital oilfield ecosystem. ORBit brings tremendous firepower to client software implementation and upgrade projects by empowering Stonebridge to move very large datasets from all the data locations involved in a legacy ERP implementation (e.g., SAP ECC), extract into the cloud, transform data to match destination data sources, and load into the new system. As a result, ORBit cuts data conversion time and costs in half. Similarly, data conversion for moving a seller's data to the buyer accelerates M&A integration for even lower TSA costs and faster capture of synergies.

ORBit is also available through a simple DaaS license that empowers energy companies to perform their own large scale data transformations regardless of the size of volumes being moved. Use ORBit to convert complex transactional datasets as part of software implementation, integration, data remediation, and data science initiatives for AI and machine learning.

Want to learn more about how Stonebridge can accelerate and simplify your ERP implementation or M&A integration? Reach out now to speak with our digital transformation experts.