The GIM Channel 03: How geoscientific data can impact your business decisions

Luc Savoie discusses some of the biggest challenges faced by the natural resources industry relating to GIM, from when he started his career to today.

When data is an intangible thing, how can we ensure company’s value their data and understand the commercial ramifications on making decisions from “bad” data?

Natural resources companies need to make multi-million dollar decisions which ultimately stem from their data. These companies need to ensure their decisions are made from quality information to avoid significant cost impacts that can ripple through a whole project if they don’t get it right.

Show Notes

Here are some key take-outs:

“The bottom line is, if you’re dealing with bad data, you’re likely to make bad decisions. And those decisions cost you money.” — Luc

• Geoscientific data is often an intangible thing
• Data is used to make commercial decisions and bad data can have a big impact on decisions that can ultimately cost the company money.
• Previously, geologists logged manually on paper. However, we see this practice continues today with some in the industry still logging manually rather than digitally -this is an environment ripe for errors.
• Logging data consistently is key to reducing the propagation of errors through the mining value chain.

 “Data analytics where you can chart things is becoming increasingly important. To do this well and trust what you are creating, you have to have a good database sitting beneath it.” – Luc

• There is a movement in the industry to shift to the digital mine. The industry, particularly in oil and gas, is using really large data sets. It’s impossible for one person to absorb all of this information.

“It all comes down to trust. Is the data I’m using to make multi million, sometimes billion dollar decisions, are those correct or not?” – Luc

• Incorrect data can have a significant cost impacts that ripples through a whole project. It’s hard to measure the cost of not having good data.
• Companies need to use their data to catch problems early.

“If you find the right people, the right process and the right technology – it’s like the golden triangle.” – Luc

• Companies that are going to survive in the current downturn, are the ones that do it better than their competitors. Companies need to use data they can trust and make better decisions from it.

Here are links you might need:

Have you heard the one about…

Recently The GIM Channel interviewed Paul Murtagh about how innovations in data management have created improvements, cost efficiencies and better workflows in resources operations.

We also talked to acQuire’s co-founder Bill Withers on creating a resilient technology company. Listen here >

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