The connected operation: why regulated industries need data platforms built for the people who run them
Executive summary
Complex operations run on data. Rules change, assets move, and the people keeping the numbers right are always working to a deadline. For most organisations, the systems managing that data were built by vendors. When something needs to change, the vendor comes back. The people who understand the operation best are not the ones who fix the system. They wait.
There is a better way.
Cloud platforms built for domain experts put the tools in the hands of the people who know the work. They build the system. They change it when operations change. The logic is theirs, not the vendor’s. That means faster response to change, less dependency, and more control over the data the business depends on.
Deloitte’s 2025 Global Boardroom Survey found that 73% of senior leaders have increased their focus on strategy and scenario planning. Their top concerns include security, technological disruption, and geopolitical volatility. For regulated industries, those concerns show up in the data systems that run the operation. A system that cannot adapt quickly is not just a technology problem. It is a business risk.
This paper makes the case for that model. It draws on oil and gas as its primary evidence, because O&G is one of the hardest environments in the world for operational data. The complexity is real, the stakes are high, and the proof is there. And it considers what that means for any regulated industry facing the same challenges.
The case for change
The problem with vendor-owned systems
Every business that runs complex operations has the same hidden risk. It sits inside the systems that manage their data.
When a vendor builds a system, the logic lives with them. They understand how the calculations work, how the workflows are structured, and how the data moves. The business pays to use it. But it does not own it. When something needs to change, the vendor decides the pace.
This matters more in some industries than others. Where operations are complex, data underpins commercial agreements, and reporting requirements shift regularly, the ability to adapt quickly is not a nice-to-have. It is essential. A system that cannot change without a vendor project is a liability dressed as an asset.
The costs are not always visible. Vendor projects are budgeted and tracked. But the slower costs, the workarounds, the spreadsheets that fill the gaps, the one person who holds all the knowledge of how the system actually works, these rarely appear on a balance sheet. They accumulate quietly until something goes wrong.
There is also a psychological dimension. Organisations often stay on legacy systems not because they are the best choice, but because they have already invested heavily in them. The sunk cost is real. So is the inertia it creates. Staying feels safer. But it rarely is.
What buyers actually need
When a senior leader signs off on a data system, they are making a bet. They are betting the system will still reflect how the operation works in three years. That the team can maintain it when people leave. That when a regulation changes or an asset is acquired, the system will not become the bottleneck.
Those are reasonable expectations. Most legacy systems cannot meet them without significant ongoing investment.
There’s a telling pattern in Deloitte’s research on where technology investment is delivering value: core security capabilities like identity and access management are seeing their share of investment shrink even as their importance grows. As technology priorities widen, the basics are being squeezed. The systems keeping operations running are not getting the attention they need.
What buyers need is not a better vendor. It is a different relationship with their systems entirely. One where the people who run the operation own the tools that support it. One where change is a configuration, not a project. One where the logic is visible, auditable, and in the hands of the business.
Gartner’s research on mapping oil and gas technology investment to business outcomes identifies this shift directly. By 2028, more than 50% of O&G companies will modernise their approach to operational excellence by making intelligent, adaptable assets the primary objective of digital investment. Adaptable means the system changes when the business does. That is only possible when the people who understand the business control the system. Read Gartner’s research.
Why this is a regulated industry problem
The challenge is most acute in regulated industries. Not because regulation makes operations harder, though it does. But because regulated industries carry a specific kind of risk that others do not.
In oil and gas, utilities, chemicals, and similar sectors, data does not just support decisions. It underpins legal obligations. Production allocation determines how revenue is split between JV partners. Emissions data feeds regulatory returns. Pipeline tariff calculations govern commercial contracts. Get them wrong, and the consequences are real: disputes, penalties, and damage that takes years to repair.
Accenture’s research on building AI-ready cloud foundations makes a broader point that applies just as well here: roughly 60% of companies are what Accenture calls ‘stabilisers’, mostly stalled on their cloud journeys because their cloud strategy was never properly aligned to business goals in the first place. The result is hidden workarounds, manual processes, and debt that builds every quarter. In a regulated industry, that debt does not just slow things down. It creates risk.
This is why domain expertise matters so much in regulated industries. The hydrocarbon accountant who has spent a decade on the same asset understands the edge cases, the commercial rules, and the history that shaped how the system works. That knowledge is the most valuable thing in the room. The question is whether the tools they use are worthy of it.
Oil and gas: the proof of concept
Why O&G is the right test case
If you want to understand whether a data platform can handle complexity, test it in oil and gas.
O&G operations involve some of the most complex, data-heavy, and rule-governed workflows in any industry. Assets are owned through joint ventures. Production is commingled across multiple streams. Revenue allocation depends on commercial agreements that run to hundreds of pages. Reporting rules vary by country, by asset, and by JV structure. All of it needs to be accurate, auditable, and defensible.
The consequences of getting it wrong are material. Revenue goes to the wrong party. Regulators issue fines. JV partners raise disputes. The kind of damage that follows a business for years.
Consider bp’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli field in the Caspian Sea. Eight co-venturers, including bp, SOCAR, ExxonMobil, and TPAO, each with different equity stakes. Seven platforms. An average of around 342,000 barrels per day in 2024. Every barrel allocated. Every allocation defensible to every partner. That is not an unusual level of complexity. It is the everyday reality of allocation at scale.
This is the environment in which EnergySys was built, tested, and proven.
What the proof looks like
The proof is not theoretical. It is in the operations that domain experts have built and run on EnergySys across some of the world’s most complex assets.
Ancala Midstream manages the Scottish Area Gas Evacuation pipeline and terminal, a 323km, 24/7 system supplying the UK gas transmission network. Rather than replacing an inherited, near-20-year-old allocation system outright, Ancala kept building on it, delivering STAR, a full replacement covering hydrocarbon nominations, allocation, emissions reporting, shipper access, and the calculation of tariff quantities, all without disrupting a pipeline that never stops running. When they needed to go further, they built carbon emissions tracking on the same platform themselves, giving their shippers direct visibility of their footprint.
Santos, one of Australia’s largest O&G producers, replaced a hydrocarbon accounting system that had become a liability: slow to change, and facing prohibitive upgrade costs. Over 20 commercial agreements, including crude oil sales, transportation, and gas sales agreements, were reviewed and configured into the platform, alongside the migration of over 50 years of historic well data. The whole replacement was delivered in under ten months, at a comparable cost to upgrading the old system. Years on, Santos keeps finding new uses for the same platform, expanding it into LNG operations, gas marketing, and marine vetting, because the team that built it the first time knows how to extend it.
TotalEnergies EP Absheron, also in the Caspian, shows what revenue allocation between JV partners actually looks like when it goes right. Condensate from their Absheron field is exported through a commercial swap, physically routed one way and commercially redelivered another, with swap ratios and entitlement tracking that partners need to trust completely. Prior period adjustments, previously recalculated by hand across historical periods, now run automatically and stay auditable. Partners get direct, read-only access to the data itself rather than emailed reports, and the whole solution was delivered in six months, entirely remotely.
These are not small operators with simple problems. They are businesses running mission-critical operations in some of the world’s most demanding regulatory environments. Domain experts owning and adapting these systems themselves is not a convenience. It is a competitive advantage.
What this means beyond O&G
If a configurable, domain-expert-owned platform can handle production allocation across eight JV partners, settle a complex commercial swap between partners who need to trust the numbers completely, and turn a near-20-year-old legacy pipeline system into one a team extends themselves without disrupting a 24/7 operation, it can handle complex data workflows in any regulated industry.
The problems domain experts face in O&G are not unique to O&G. They exist wherever operations run on complex, linked data governed by changing rules. Utilities reconciling network tariffs and regulatory returns. Chemical producers managing compliance data across multiple sites. Mining companies calculating royalties under different regulatory frameworks. Life sciences companies managing the data workflows that feed regulatory submissions.
The tools are the same. The principle is the same. The people who understand the operation should own the systems that run it. O&G proved the model. The question now is which industries are ready to apply it.
The connected operation
What it actually means
A connected operation is not a technology vision. It is a business one.
It describes an organisation where the systems running critical workflows are owned by the people who understand those workflows. Where data moves cleanly between systems. Where when a rule changes, the team that knows the rule changes the system. Where the logic is visible, not buried in a vendor’s code.
Most organisations are further from this than they realise. Data sits in silos. Systems were built at different times by different vendors. Teams have learned to work around the gaps. The cost is hidden but real: time spent reconciling data, risks carried by spreadsheets that were never meant to be load-bearing, and a slow dependence on individuals who hold knowledge that lives nowhere else.
A configurable cloud platform does not fix this overnight. But it changes things. Each system a domain expert builds on the platform is a system the business owns. Each workflow they configure is one they can change when the operation changes. Over time, the connected operation becomes real.
What the buyer gains
For the person responsible for the operation, the shift to domain-expert-owned systems changes three things that matter.
First, response time. When a regulation changes or a JV agreement is restructured, the team can update the system themselves rather than waiting months for a vendor project. The business moves at the pace it needs to.
Second, risk. Knowledge that lives in the system rather than in one person’s head is knowledge the organisation keeps when that person leaves. Audit trails built in from the start mean the business can answer any question a regulator or partner asks. The hidden risks of legacy systems do not accumulate in the same way.
Third, cost. Not just the obvious costs of vendor projects and licence fees, but the slower ones. Time spent on manual processes. Resource tied up maintaining systems that should maintain themselves. Deloitte’s research shows that investment in core system infrastructure is already being squeezed as technology priorities grow. Organisations that reduce vendor dependency free up that resource for the work that actually matters.
Beyond oil and gas
The industries that benefit most from this model share the same core characteristics. Complex operations. Data that underpins commercial agreements and regulatory obligations. Rules that change. And domain experts who understand the work but have had to rely on vendors to build the tools.
That describes O&G. It also describes utilities reconciling network tariffs and regulatory returns, and this isn’t hypothetical. Firstgas, which operates New Zealand’s high-pressure gas transmission network, has run its daily gas composition calculations and next-day allocation on EnergySys since 2006. Since then, they’ve had a legal obligation to publish that data to the public every single day through New Zealand’s Otis portal, and they’ve configured and adapted the platform themselves through nearly two decades of regulatory change, without raising a vendor ticket to do it.
Chemical producers managing compliance data across multiple sites. Mining companies calculating royalties under different regulatory frameworks. Life sciences companies managing the data workflows that feed regulatory submissions.
In each case, the work is periodic, rules-based, and important. Get the numbers wrong, and the business carries real risk. The domain expert knows how the numbers should work. The question is whether they have the tools to build the systems that produce them.
O&G has shown that they can. The platform exists. The proof is there. The model works in one of the hardest operating environments in the world.
For any regulated industry asking whether this could work for them, the answer is already sitting in the North Sea and the Caspian.
Find out what your team could build
EnergySys is the configurable cloud platform for domain experts. It gives the people who understand your operations the tools to build, own, and adapt the systems your business runs on.
See what EnergySys can do for your team, explore our platform, or get in touch at sales@energysys.com.
