The role of Data Exchange Standards
Whether your organization is delivering or receiving customer data or dealing with another party's server or system, a standard data format saves significant time and resources that would otherwise be spent addressing proprietary formats for all the different platforms in operation across the industry. The use of standards also reduces the time spent testing and checking data if it were transiting across numerous connection systems.
What does the adoption of data exchange standards entail?
Data input and output procedures need only be set up and validated once for the applicable data standards, and this is an investment in time and resources. However it pays off very quickly by reducing the number of interfaces that need to be maintained, and by being able to offer customers a richer data format, notably in terms of large amounts of metadata, that in turn should allow for an up-sell of services.
Why does a service company need to support standards?
Moving in the direction of standards data exchange formats makes strong business sense when one considers the number of large customer organizations, notably multi-national majors, large independents and National Oil Companies (NOCs), that are have been and continue to be strong backers of the standards organizations. For projects where the customer is designing a solution involving multiple service companies, integration and communication with the other actors will be greatly simplified if all systems use data transfer standards designed by the industry. Standards are developed using the efforts of Work Groups that bring together experts from member organizations (operators, service and technology companies) to develop the specifications for data standards in a collegial manner. Being a member of one or more SIGs allows service company experts to take part in the process, ensuring that new standards incorporate items relevant to company-specific activities or products.