Pick the record first. The application follows from it.
The hard part of starting is not choosing between 27 applications. It is naming the record that causes you the most trouble; because once that is named, the application is obvious.
4 moves, and what each one is really deciding.
None of these is a procurement stage. Each is a decision somebody in your organisation has to make, and the application only becomes relevant after the first one.
- Move 01
Pick the record, not the application
Start from the register, project, asset or vessel causing the most trouble now; the one where a figure is regularly challenged and nobody can settle it quickly. That record decides the application; the application does not decide the record.
Decides: Which application is first - Move 02
Agree what makes it valid
Before anything is configured, the team says who may change the record, what makes an entry valid, what must never be lost and who is allowed to approve. Those four answers are what the application enforces.
Decides: The rules the system will hold you to - Move 03
Run it on live work
A first period on real work, with the office and the field on the same record. What the application derives is checked against what the team already knows to be true; and where the two disagree, the record underneath is examined.
Decides: Whether the derived figures can be trusted - Move 04
Widen only when a team is ready
The next application is adopted because its own team wants it, not because the first one requires it. Where the work genuinely joins, one named record crosses; everywhere else the two stay independent.
Decides: Whether there is a second application at all
6 questions that find the record for you.
Answer these about your own operation and the first application usually names itself. They are also the questions a working session opens with.
Which figure gets challenged most often?
Why it matters: That is usually the record with the weakest chain beneath it, and the best first application.
Who is allowed to approve it today?
Why it matters: If the answer is “whoever is available”, segregation of duties will be the first thing that changes.
Where does the data actually get entered?
Why it matters: If it is re-typed from a field sheet into an office system, the gap between the two is where the errors live.
What happens when a value is corrected?
Why it matters: Whether the original survives decides whether a closed period can ever be explained again.
Which numbers does anybody outside the team read?
Why it matters: Those are the ones that need a stated basis, because they are the ones that get quoted.
What would you need to show a regulator tomorrow?
Why it matters: It is the fastest way to find out what your current record cannot produce.
Every operating area has a natural first application.
Not a mandatory one. Any of the applications in an area can be the only one you ever run; these are where most organisations find their clearest problem.
- PDMSPDMS: Project Delivery Management System3 applications in this area
- CVMSCVMS: Contractor / Vendor Management System4 applications in this area
- CCMSCCMS: Completion, Commissioning & Handover Management System3 applications in this area
- OPEPOPEP: Offshore Projects Execution Platform3 applications in this area
- AIRMSAIRMS: Asset Integrity & Reliability Management System4 applications in this area
- FAMSFAMS: Flow Assurance Management System2 applications in this area
- HSEHSE: Health, Safety & Environment Management System4 applications in this area
- IMSIMS: Integrated Management System4 applications in this area
An hour with one register, not a presentation.
The people who should be in it are the ones who keep the record and the one who signs it. Everything worth deciding gets decided by whether those two recognise what they are looking at.
- Your own register, project, asset or vessel on screen
- The rules you already apply to it, set against the ones the application enforces
- The figures it derives; and the ones it will tell you it cannot
Then: what adoption actually involves.
Once the record is named, the next question is what has to be settled to bring the application into use.
Bring the record that gets challenged most.
That one is almost always the right place to start, and it is the fastest way to find out whether any of this helps.