Asset-intensive companies, such as those in the oil and gas, utilities, and chemicals industries, operate in a unique environment that has increased risks in the areas of asset up-time, compliance, and safety. However, best-in-class asset-intensive organizations share a competitive advantage: they have formal processes in place to assess, quantify, and prioritize their shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages (STOs) risks.

This is one of the key takeaways from Optimizing STO Management to Achieve Operational Excellence," a new report by the Aberdeen Group.

Based on the experiences of almost 200 respondents, the report explores how leaders in the asset-intensive segment view STOs as enterprise wide events that are critical to success—as opposed to the traditional view of STOs as silo-ed events.

STOs command a large portion of budgets as well as contingency funds. Poorly executed STO processes can cost an organization millions of dollars in lost revenue, drive up operating costs, and cause permanent damage to the business, writes the report's author, Reid Paquin, research analyst, Manufacturing, Product Innovation and Engineering, at the Aberdeen Group.

How Leaders Outperform Peers

Although inevitable risk is associated with STOs, well-executed STO processes can represent a source of competitive advantage for an organization that controls them better than its peers. Successful companies have become more proactive in how they approach STOs and can therefore outperform their competitors.

When asked about the importance of formal processes, respondents from 88 percent of the best-in-class companies said their organization uses standardized risk assessment processes. Among the respondents, 81 percent said they benefit from standardized risk quantification processes. And similarly, three-quarters of the respondents said they run standardized risk prioritization processes.

Another characteristic of best-in-class organizations is their ability to merge critical data and project plans. Such companies are 43 percent more likely than their competitors to embed risk information into their strategies. This enables them to be more capable of reacting to unforeseen issues, such as changes in scope and environmental issues.

Last, because there is so much information to consider when managing STOs, best-in-class companies turn to technology to automate their processes rather than relying on inefficient or manual processes.

Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Solutions Support Successful STOs

"Top performers use project management solutions to better manage the numerous moving parts of an outage, whether it's scheduling resources, reviewing the impact of change, or developing mitigation plans," Paquin writes in the report.

Enterprise project portfolio management solutions support the critical corporate characteristics required to reduce the risk of STOs, helping companies assess risks, facilitate collaboration, distribute resources appropriately, achieve real-time visibility, adopt formal change-management plans, standardize processes, and embrace continuous improvement for future STO activities.

Benchmark Your Company

For more details about these and other findings, read the full Aberdeen Group report, Optimizing STO Management to Achieve Operational Excellence."

To gauge the maturity of your company's STO practices, complete an exclusive benchmark assessment developed by the Aberdeen Group and made available by Oracle.