Enhanced quality, in less time
The question for many companies when producing documentation is how to keep on top of everything. Who is doing what, and when? Which is the current version, and who will take care of formatting, layout and numbering? How will it be done? These are only some of the issues that arise when companies produce documentation.
Oil and gas companies world-wide use XaitPorter for their bids, reports and manuals – in fact, XaitPorter is used by companies worldwide for all types of projects where the end product is a document. XaitPorter helps these companies produce their documents faster, with complete control of the workflow, visibility throughout the project, and with enhanced quality of the content.
“There must be a better way.”
It all started when BPs Exploration Department in Norway contacted Xait saying “There must be a better way of producing documents in teams than Word” and requested an application for this. Xait developed XaitPorter, a document collaborative writing application, which has helped several oil & gas companies deal with their team writing issues.
When BP used XaitPorter for their license round applications in 2001 they were very successful. In fact, they were so successful that they paid for further development of XaitPorter given that the software was not to be sold commercially before the end of 2003.
The background for BPs request was that they wanted a better tool to produce license round applications for the Norwegian Government for acreage on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. In Norway, the Norwegian Government awards acreage on the Norwegian Continental shelf to oil companies with the best technical application. Writing these applications involves a large, multi-disciplinary, cross-site team working together for a long period to produce a comprehensive document. Those involved are under enormous pressure to secure the source of their company’s future wealth and this often drives them to work many late nights, against a demanding writing schedule, to meet their deadlines. Project managers struggle to control the process because they often cannot review work until it is almost finished and some contributors, such as the drafting department, have to wait until near the end of the process before they can start their work. Writing in dispersed teams is also beset with version tracking problems, files being locked or overwritten, and problems compiling multiple formats into one consistent document.
“It takes away the chaos.”
Since then, several other oil companies have started using XaitPorter. XaitPorter has become the standard application writing tool for license round applications in Norway. In the 20th Licensing Round and in Awards for Predefined Areas in 2009, more than 90% of the applications were produced in XaitPorter.
XaitPorter gives companies the possibility to have several people working on the same document simultaneously or in partnership with other companies – in real time. A user of XaitPorter says that “it takes away the chaos inherent when producing documents in teams. It helps streamline the process”.
