May 2010 Newsletter

My apologies that this month’s news letter is so late – I spent a good part of May in the US for OTC and a short break immediately afterwards and have been digging through the backlog of work ever since returning!  This month I’d like to touch a few subjects including the OTC conference, our efforts around profiling our companies and our new website.

This year was my first trip to the annual Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston and what an event it is.  As one would expect from a Texan event it is big – hard to describe the scale in words but many, many soccer pitches of stands spread over 3 venues at Houston’s major sports/exhibition complex, tens of thousands of visitors and everybody who’s anybody in the upstream industry there!  The South African stand had a brilliant position in the middle of everything this year and the 10 member companies who exhibited on the stand seemed pleased with the results of their investment.  The event runs over 3½  days from Monday to Thursday and aside from the enormous exhibition there are numerous talks and events during the week with lots of opportunities for networking and learning about the latest developments in the industry.  Our contribution was a well-attended Wine Tasting event on the South African stand.  Some of the thoughts that struck me about the event.  It is a good opportunity for companies who are selling into the global upstream industry to showcase themselves by exhibiting on the stand.  Just showing up with a stall is not enough – it is important to plan your time in Houston: setting up meetings, making sure people know you are coming and thinking about the events you will attend.  This “pre-work” will greatly enhance the experience to maximize new contacts and deepen existing relationships. Also leave time to wander around the exhibits – it’s a great opportunity to see what competitors are up to, find clients on their stands and generally learn more about the industry.   I think OTC is also a great opportunity for South African companies who are just breaking into the upstream market to go and learn about the industry – just being there and walking the halls, going to events will given you fresh appreciation for the industry and opportunities to build relationships.

As many of you know the DTI has decided not to continue funding a South African pavilion at OTC which means that going forward the South African stand will be largely privately funded as it was this year.  Perhaps the biggest implication of this is that companies need to make their decisions about next year’s OTC11 conference before the end of July in order to meet the booking and deposit payment deadlines. We will shortly be asking for expressions of interest for OTC11 and will call a meeting for potentially interested companies in the next week or so.  I urge you to consider coming to the meeting and potentially exhibiting.  We are also going to try and organize a trade mission trip to next year’s OTC so that companies not exhibiting on the stand can get involved.

Much of the activity in the office over the past month has centred around our “Industry Analysis” project. As I mentioned in a previous letter, profiling our industry base will provide a critical foundation for SAOGA’s activities.  We have now developed a new member questionnaire that we will ask members to fill out on joining and membership renewal.  We will also approach a number of other companies that we know are active in the industry.  It is a user-friendly (I hope you will agree and feedback if not!) pdf form that can be filled out electronically and returned by email.  It would greatly assist us if you could take this seriously. In addition to the form we are also planning to visit each member company over the next few months to see firsthand your businesses and hear your concerns, opportunities and requirements.  

I should also mention the UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) Competitive Supplier Development Programme (CSDP) that we are participating in as part of this analysis effort. Ultimately, analyzing the industry is worthless if this information does not translate into better programmes to develop business and improve the industry. The UNIDO CSDP is a supplier development initiative that has been rolled out in various parts of the world over the past 20 years.  At one level the CSDP is an exchange to match buyers and sellers.  In South Africa the national government (specifically the DTI) has committed the state-owned enterprises to participating in the programme as buyers.  However, the programme is much more – it is intended to help suppliers develop and ultimately to allow replacement of imports with local content.  At the company level there is a three step process (profiling, benchmarking and improvement interventions) for helping companies to improve while at an industry level there are forums to analyse the value chain and identify localization opportunities. We have decided to participate in the programme because it provides a proven process for supplier development and a link to major buyers in our industry (PetroSA and possibly Sasol).  Within the next month or so we will arrange a workshop to profile the programme and its benefits and expect to involve a subset of our more technically focused members in the UNIDO CSDP.

Lastly a word about a subject close to my heart  - our new website.  For some months now we have been rebuilding our internal capability to better store and disseminate information. I’m pleased to say that this has come to fruition in a new website that is now up and running at www.saoga.org.za (the old  www.offshoreafrica.co.za will remain valid and be redirected to this new site).  The process of building a website as I am learning is a journey and what is currently there is far from complete – it will grow and develop over time.  My vision is that this site will become the major South African portal for information about the upstream industry. For the time being you won’t find a lot more than you are used to seeing on our website although we have rewritten a lot of the content on the site to reflect current thinking.  Behind the scenes however the site includes a powerful CRM (customer relationship management) system that allows us to manage many of the core processes in our organization.  In the near future we should be opening up more functionality to users on the site that will allow you online to change your company and personal information, make bookings at our events and manage the membership joining and renewal process.  For now users who are used to logging into our system should note that your old logins are no longer valid – new logins will be allocated to members when we launch this functionality.   The member questionnaires mentioned above are an important element of getting our data cleaned up to underpin all this new functionality so another plug for helping out in this regard!   Please feel free to send us feedback about the site.