Collaboration Architecture Success Story

Talisman Energy

Talisman Energy Inc. is an independent upstream oil and gas company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Talisman has operations in Canada and its subsidiaries operate in the UK, Norway, Southeast Asia, North Africa , South America and the United States.

Business Situation

Talisman is currently in a period of global expansion and rapid growth which requires the company to identify ways in which technology can be used to capture and share knowledge and collaborate more effectively. Talisman engaged Ideaca to perform a Collaboration Architecture Needs Assessment to assist them with the following:

  • Understanding how best to deal with the expansion, growth, and evolving business practices that are requiring workers to collaborate in cross-functional and geographically distributed teams, composed of internal staff and external business partners
  • Determining how to most appropriately address these collaboration needs by delivering common solutions which include technologies such as traditional phone / email / calendar, team-oriented software, and real-time communications
  • Engage key representatives that illustrate a cross-section of business needs and technology requirements relating to collaboration
  • Obtain input regarding existing collaboration challenges being faced, tools / solutions in use or being considered, and the overall importance of collaboration in support of business objectives
  • Formulation of a plan for moving from the current day-to-day operational state to a desired future state

Assessment

As part of the needs assessment, Ideaca conducted various interviews, held workshops, did background research, and provided thought leadership based on experience and knowledge. The results are in-depth guidelines and recommendations suggesting what Talisman can do to improve collaboration within their current environment, considering global growth, existing business processes, identified pain-points, various collaborative tools and the infrastructure required to support them. The assessment includes:

  • A definition of „collaboration‟ for Talisman
  • Identifying existing issues pertaining to current collaboration practices, various business processes and lack of standards pertaining to these processes
  • Recommendations for a desired (or to-be) state that focus on People (the change management needs to encourage collaboration), Process (the appropriate governance for success) and Technology (the components of a Collaboration Architecture leveraging existing tools and new tools/concepts)
  • A high-level “road map” to outline possible ways that Talisman may transition from the current to the desired state of operations, and a prioritized list of next steps

Results

  • Improved visibility into how the organization collaborates, and areas for improvement based on a newly-defined definition of collaboration
  • Defined sample business scenarios that illustrate existing staff interactions and opportunities for improved collaboration
  • A better understanding of how software can be used to facilitate a team- and project-based work environment, identifying opportunities to improve and increase the current use of collaboration tools
  • An architecture that can be applied across the organization internationally to address communication and collaboration challenges
  • The ability to be proactive, instead of reactive, in helping staff work more effectively