Dear Beth1983:
Petroleum Place has positioned itself as providing the most
comprehensive set of services to the oil and gas industry. It
provides both enterprise software systems and a platform for asset
transactions. Its product offering is very broad and consists of the
following elements:
"The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Petroleum Place, provides Internet-enabled transaction and brokerage
services for the acquisition and divestiture of oil and gas
properties."
"Petroleum Place Energy Advisors, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Petroleum Place, provides negotiated transaction and advisory services
for the acquisition and divestiture of oil and gas properties."
"Offered through Petro TradeLinks, an exclusive members-only
organization currently representing over 60 leading energy companies,
members can review properties available for sale or trade in a secure
environment hosted on Petroleum Place and network with other members
either online or at events to facilitate transactions."
"Transaction Services" Petroleum Place
http://www.petroleumplace.com/transaction_services.jsp
"Developed by Paradigm Technologies, Excalibur is a fully integrated
energy management system specifically for the oil and gas producer
that includes general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, revenue
distribution, joint interest billing, asset management, production
accounting, land and gas control."
"Developed by Paradigm Technologies, Entelligent is an international
oil and gas accounting system integrated with the PeopleSoft
EnterpriseOne toolset that addresses joint venture accounting, and
authorization for expenditures needs. This product integrates with the
existing PeopleSoft financial package."
"The Enterprise Upstream suite of applications are developed on the
Oracle platform and were previously offered through Novistar (prior to
being acquired by P2 Energy Solutions). The solution architecture of
Enterprise Upstream is designed to manage the complex business
processes of upstream oil and gas, enabling E&P companies around the
world to streamline their organization, improve access to information
and focus on their core business."
"Petroleum Financial (PFI), a subsidiary of P2 Energy Solutions,
provides business process outsourcing services for the upstream energy
industry specializing in back-office accounting and land
administration."
"Enterprise Solutions" Petroleum Place
http://www.petroleumplace.com/software_services.jsp
The service offerings can be divided into three categories: asset
advising and transactions, enterprise software systems, and
outsourcing services. The company faces a number of existing and
potential competitors in each area.
For asset advising and transactions, Petroleum Place is primarily
competing with investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup,
although some management consulting firms also provide asset advice.
Petroleum Place is positioning itself as having unique depth in the
oil and gas industry because of its exclusive focus on that industry.
However, if substantial financial resources are necessary to support a
transaction, Petroleum Place is unlikely to be able to provide
financing from its own resources on the scale of a traditional
investment bank. Petroleum Place also lacks well-known, potentially
influential industry analysts like those at the investment banks. On
the other hand, investment banks do not provide business process
outsourcing services and enterprise software, and management
consulting firms do not provide asset transaction support.
For enterprise software systems, Petroleum Place competes with a
number of firms both large and small. SAP, the world's largest
enterprise software provider, has an extensive oil and gas software
solution ("Industry-Specific Business Maps -- Oil & Gas" SAP
http://www.sap.com/businessmaps/52BBC1FA4ED944D198E6E2F4CF79025C/),
along with considerable expertise with Internet-based marketplaces.
Many smaller companies also exist, such as Enertia
(http://www.enertia-software.com/) and Allegro Development Corp.
(http://www.allegrodevelopment.com/). Petroleum Place positions
itself as providing additional services that traditional software
companies do not, such as business process outsourcing and advising
and supporting asset transactions. Given that Petroleum Place's
software offerings require software from PeopleSoft and Oracle to
function, PeopleSoft and Oracle could develop into competitors in the
future.
For business process outsourcing, Petroleum Place competes with many
firms, including IBM, EDS, and Hewlett-Packard. Unlike Petroleum
Place, these companies do not provide enterprise software, nor did
they advise on asset transactions. However, all of them are well
versed in operating enterprise software, and could therefore easily
partner with one of the software companies to effectively compete with
Petroleum Place in this space.
Based on this analysis of Petroleum Place's competitors and product
offerings, Petroleum Place provides a unique mix of services to the
oil and gas industry. This ability to be a "one-stop shop," combined
with its focus and in-depth knowledge of the petroleum industry, is
its key selling point. Although many competitors exist, none of them
completely overlap with Petroleum Place's product offerings. However,
if Petroleum Place is successful, and its success is based upon the
its fusion of such a wide range of services, it would be reasonable to
expect that companies who compete with different aspects of Petroleum
Place's product offerings would seek to partner with one another to
provide a complete solution. Partnerships between the business
process outsourcing firms and software companies are already very
common. So are partnerships between management consulting firms and
software companies. The participation of an investment banking firm
is the component which would be unusual at the present time. Clearly,
a partnership between Goldman Sachs, SAP, and IBM, for example, would
be a major challenge to Petroleum Place.
Sincerely,
Wonko |
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