Company Name: Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI)Headquarters: Lafayette, Louisiana, USAProducts and Services: 250 leading-edge technology helicopter fleet, offshore oil and gas, onshore mining, international, aero-medical, and technical service industriesWebsite: www.phihelico.com

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PETROLEUM HELICOPTERS

OOVERVIEW

BUMPY RIDE

The economic downturn and escalating fuel prices together have had a profound effect on the business aircraft markets. Business and general aviation aircraft production dropped by 40% in 2010 and the industry, dependent on consumer spending power and fuel costs to main profitability, experienced a serious setback. For avionics manufacturers globally, the slump has been an eye- opener. They realized that slumps, economic downturns, escalating fuel prices are factors beyond their control, but what is within their control is their own respective organizations and playing it smart would mean that their internal productivity always remained at peak performance. Also, they accepted the fact that their business vision was dependent on business intelligence which often was not available and whenever it was it was not completely dependable.

For Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI), headquartered at Lafayette in Louisiana, USA, one of the world’s leading helicopter companies known for safe and reliable helicopter transportation, realisation that technology could make a difference happened when it saw that each of its 200 bases worldwide behaved like independent entities, creating information silos. Not anywhere as smooth as its fleet of Bell and Sikorsky helicopters, PHI’s voluminous data resided in disparate data sources. Its IT department spent most of its time in data extraction and the PHI managers struggled to come to terms with information which was either inaccurate or delayed.

PHI is a big name in the commercial helicopters business. Its fleet of more than 275 Bell and Sikorsky helicopters span the skies working for offshore oil, onshore mining, scientific expedition, aero-medical and technical service companies. It has an impeccable reputation as the world’s top commercial operator. This title is well deserved as PHI is equipped with best-of-class pilots, technicians and premier maintenance facilities. However, PHI was experiencing its own issues. PHI had in place systems like Lawson Financials & Payroll and Ramco Aviation to manage its transactional requirements. These systems

operated on Oracle platform and updated transactional data across locations. PHI collated transactional information through structured data sources, as well as MS Excel. But it did not have access to data, not just any data but important, decision-making analytical data. Being a methodical and professional company, PHI’s managers spent excruciating hours extracting information.

Spanning the entire Gulf Coast region, PHI’s passenger list is over 1,000,000 a year. It flies its helicopters under various conditions and over varied lengths of time. Service to major producers and independents in the domestic offshore oil and gas industry continues to be the largest segment of their operation. While there have been massive changes in the oil and gas industry, particularly in the offshore environment, PHI have sustained their long time leadership position by helping customers achieve maximum efficiency and productivity– essential components of success in an environment where exploration, drilling, and production take place at greater depths each year.

A new level of co-operation between companies operating in this environment had allowed PHI to become more than a service provider. Alliances had been formed in which they supported customer goals and objectives by providing value-added services that were unique in the commercial helicopter industry.

PHI was growing into a leader in support of deepwater oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, serving installations more than 200 miles offshore in nearly 10,000 feet of water. PHI’s hangar facilities were responsible for planning maintenance activities on aircraft, by monitoring consumption parameters on different components fitted on the aircraft. These maintenance activities were executed as projects and were termed hangar visits. PHI monitored these projects closely, to ensure that there were no delays in the release of the aircraft for normal operations. The field bases performed routine inspections on aircrafts assigned to bases, to ensure that aircrafts were not grounded during normal flying hours, which would result in a loss of revenue. The Materials department was responsible for procurement of parts for the planned hangar visits. In addition, it was responsible for shipment of

OGRAMCO ON THE RADAR

parts to field bases, based on requests, to ensure that Aircraft on Ground (AOG) situations did not occur. Working in silos, each function behaved in a disintegrated way and this made analysis a daunting task. The company needed information and it needed it in real time.

PHI turned to Ramco to provide them with one consolidated, single solution that would integrate their global operations and provide them with accurate business information based on which they could make intelligent decisions.

Ramco DecisionWorks, a comprehensive Corporate Performance Management solution, forms part of the Ramco Enterprise Series packaged solutions. It is a powerful combine for Corporate Performance Management, with applications of Business Integrator, Business Decisions, Analytical Workflow and Planning & Budgeting.

Business Integrator performs the functions of ETL (Extract Transform Load). It facilitates smooth collation of data from multiple transactional sources (ERP, SCM, CRM, etc.) and their transformation into Data Marts/Data Warehouse, for further analysis and decision-making. At PHI, Business Integrator designed and constructed the Data Warehouse using various transactional data sources like Lawson Financial, Ramco Aviation solution, etc.

Business Decisions provided the following objective specific information and actionable processes:

• Metrics or Key Performance Indicators to measure the performance of various facets of the goal (Performance Management)

• Relevant reports, drill downs and cubes to summarize/analyze the objective along with multiple dimensions (Business Intelligence)

• Business rules to monitor critical events and initiate alerts/workflow for the given objective (Event Management)

• Configure Personal–Business Dashboards with

multiple scorecards, to take a quick view of the performance of an organization and navigate into details from the dashboard. This can be configured in a Balanced Scorecard framework and/or the Closed Loop Planning & Control framework (Management by Objectives/Goal Hierarchy) for Strategic, Tactical and Operational Performance Management

• Analytical Workflow provided for the automation of any Analytical Business Process, for flow of Information/Tasks

• Planning & Budgeting application provided an Excel interface for Planning, with additional algorithms available as Excel add-ins.

At PHI, Ramco DecisionWorks enabled collation of data from diverse systems into a central repository. This allowed for continuous access to up-to date information and enabled them to look across locations to do trending and data analysis.

The first benefit derived from the solution was Financial Analysis.

With Ramco DecisionWorks, PHI could now automatically calculate ROCE (Return Of Capital Employed) as a key performance indicator. This calculation was done based on ratio from EBITDA to Capital Employed at an aggregate level. Further analysis on ROCE was enabled by providing a multidimensional report, with a drill down on the different components of ROCE.

Along with ROCE, PHI could now do a DOC (Direct Operating Costs) and a Direct Maintenance Costs Analysis. For this analysis, transactional information was extracted from the Lawson Activities module and serve as the aggregated costs under various account categories. This data was then uploaded into the DecisionWorks database server, to generate a drill down report on the Operating and Maintenance Costs, for the respective model of aircrafts used. A report on the Direct Operating Costs per flight hour for different models of aircraft was also generated.

PHI often had to deal with AOG or `Aircraft On Ground’ situation. This is a situation which occurs when an aircraft does not meet regulatory requirements and is found unfit for flight. AOGs can

GGSUMMARY

be due to various reasons such as shortage of material, skills, lack of adequate time, lack of maintenance facilities, improper material planning, unexpected maintenance events, accidents and so on. PHI wanted to identify the reasons for AOGs, in order to take action and reduce Aircraft on Ground occurrences. To aid PHI managers in AOG Analysis, Aircraft on Ground situations are configured as KPIs and a detailed report with drill down on various dimensions like ATA and occurrences was provided.

The key objectives of analysis for the Materials function area were:

• Increase the Stock Turn Rate

• Increase service levels by satisfying requests within the specified date

• Improve accuracy by reducing the value of inventory and repeat adjustment of parts

• Enhance the vendor performance

To achieve these objectives, data was extracted from Ramco Aviation, with predefined logic and KPIs configured along with reports like:

1. Repeated parts requested report

2. Repeated parts adjustment report

3. Non-moving parts report

4. Vendor performance report

The objectives of the Safety Analysis were twofold:

1. To reduce risks associated with business operations, by analyzing the causes for incidents and occurrences.

2. Improve safety awareness among PHI employees through proactive initiatives.

The data sources included both Ramco Aviation Solution and Excel spreadsheets, which captured information on proactive measures taken. Standard measures like Total Preventable Occurrences Rate (TPOR), Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and Total Flight Accident Rate (TFAR) were used by the departments to monitor the effort rates in PHI. Multidimensional reports were configured in

Ramco DecisionWorks that helped understand trends, for the different KPIs and the impact of the proactive efforts in reducing the number of incidents, accidents or occurrences.

Multidimensional reports that help in analyzing the current service levels for the customers were configured for the Operations department. PHI reports included Contract / Aircraft Availability Report, Replacement Event Report, etc. The analysis was further supplemented by KPIs like Aircraft Availability Rate, Contract Availability Rate, etc.

The data that PHI’s Marketing department required for analysis was extracted from multiple sources. Information on customer details was extracted from McMobile contact management software. Details of marketing revenue were extracted from Lawson application while sales call details from Excel spreadsheets. Multidimensional reports on Customer Profitability Analysis were configured along with KPIs like number of shelf customers, number of ferry flights, etc. The reports and KPIs configured for all the functional areas were rendered in a Goal Hierarchy framework, for Performance Management, in Ramco DecisionWorks.

• Automation of the data collation and validation process, resulted in little manual interference, thereby increasing time for analysis

• Reduction of PHI’s dependence on the IT department for their analytical purposes

• Multidimensional analytical reports, with drill downs and KPIs, for business users, based on their span of control

• Provision of Visual Performance Indicators and Personalisable Dashboard for the users

BEN

EFIT

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• Automation of the data collation and validation process, resulted in little manual interference,

thereby increasing time for analysis• Reduction of PHI’s dependence on the IT

department for their analytical purposes• Multidimensional analytical reports, withdrill downs and KPIs, for business users,

based on their span of control• Provision of Visual Performance Indicators and

Personalisable Dashboard for the users

SO

LUTION – RAMCO DECISIONWO

RK

S• Financial Reports• Aircraft On Ground (AOG)

analysis• Marketing & Sales Analysis

• Financial Analysis

HIGHLIGHTS

• No manual intervention • No time delay

• User can view the latest datafrom his/her desktop

• Actual sales can be analyzed vis-à-vis planning

• Role-based security access to the users • Multiple scenario analysis of sales

possible, enabling managers toplan for the future effectively

CHALLENGES FACED

• Lack of visibility into its 200 worldwide operations

• Lack of data related to:• Grounded fleet

• Financial information• Customer behavior• Sales projections

• Operational hiccups

CUSTOMER BACKGROUND

• Presence in 43 countries• Revenue: growing at a five-year

CAGR of over 42%• Services to the offshore oil and

gas, onshore mining, international, aero-medical, and technical

service industries• Product range: 250 leading-edge

technology helicopter fleet

QUICK FACTS

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