Encino Energy streamlines operations with Microsoft Power Platform

Encino Energy streamlines operations with Microsoft Power Platform  

Encino Energy is the largest oil producer in Ohio and one of the largest natural gas producers in the state. The company is also a productive innovator on Power Platform. A small team of makers has developed over 30 applications that support both field operations and back-office processes.  

“We chose Power Platform as our low code-no code platform to rapidly and efficiently respond to business needs through the development of customized applications,” says Anna Drummond, Sr. Director of Data Analytics and Development. “This solution allows us to fill gaps that our application vendors cannot address, while minimizing the overhead and maintenance typically associated with custom-built applications and workflows.”

“Since its founding, Encino has embraced four core technology disciplines in order to beat the competition: Embrace the cloud, integrate, automate, and curate data as an asset.  These principles drive a focus on innovation as a key tenant of the Encino culture – and Power Platform is helping us deliver on those principles” says Tim Parker, Chief Technical Officer at Encino.  

Custom solutions for specific operational scenarios  

A good example of the custom development that Eneco is doing with Power Platform is a solution developed for winter maintenance. Snow removal is a critical part of keeping field sites operational. Previously, employees would call contractors directly for plowing services but this often resulted in delays or services that weren’t always required.  

Now, requests from the field are sent to a central operations team using a simple app built using Power Apps. The team can approve and prioritize which sites should be plowed based on weather conditions, size of the site, and other factors. Once a request is approved, a cloud flow triggers a text message and email to a contractor. The contractor marks a job as complete in the email and a cloud flow sends the alert back through the system.    

The results of this simple application have surprised even Pareso. Just by streamlining management of plowing services, winter maintenance costs have been dramatically reduced from $1.5M to $300K a year.

“I’d rather build a custom solution on Power Platform than shop for an off-the-shelf app. It’s not only less expensive, but we can deliver exactly what our employees want, without a lot of extra features that they’ll never use,” says Sam Pareso, Operations Technology Engineer at Encino.  

Easier access to mission critical data

Along with streamlining processes out in the field, Power Platform is also helping to provide better access to critical data from production sites. Previously, to access this data, an employee would have to log into the company’s VPN and then into a vendor’s RDP machine that stores the source data. Because this could only be done on a laptop, field employees would have to call in for the data – a process that could take up to 30 minutes.  

This same data can now be accessed instantly using applications built using Power Apps. Better yet, the information can be presented in a more user-friendly format compared to the UI available on the source systems, including high-level views of data.  

Four of these applications now are key to Encino’s entire production process. One app currently provides telemetry from over 2,200 tanks across the field, helping better control tanks from overfilling, an incident that can shut down an entire site.  

Another app helps better co-ordinate waste handling to and from field sites. “We built something with Power Platform that offers very similar capabilities to an off-the-shelf solution that would have cost us over $15,000 a month,” says Pareso. The custom app also enables offline access – a feature provided natively with Dataverse. “Our workers are often in areas where cell phone service is unreliable and Dataverse has made it easy to provide offline access to critical information.”  

Power Platform has also made it easy to expand and evolve applications. This has been particularly important when modifying apps to meet environmental regulations and reporting. Rather than rely on third-party software – and all the costs and employee training that comes with them – the team has been able to build regulatory features directly into existing Power Platform solutions. “We can easily add functionality to an app with minimal disruption to the user experience,” says Pareso. 

A more efficient architecture

Frontline employees aren’t the only ones benefiting from these applications. The operational data they provide is just as useful to the company’s 300+ contractors. Using guest access available with Power Platform, Encino is able to provide contractors with access to Power Apps applications, quickly and securely.

“Before, we would give out passwords, but we had no visibility into how those passwords were being shared or used," says Don Jackson, Senior DevOps Engineer at Encino. “With native support for Entra ID, Power Platform has made guest access so much easier and more secure, even with non-Microsoft email accounts. It has really helped us extend the value of our applications out to our contractors.” 

As the number of users continues to increase, the team is looking at evolving its current architecture. Today, all field data is collected in a central Snowflake database and organized in virtual tables in SQL before it is moved to Dataverse. With a new Snowflake connector (currently in beta), Encino plans to remove SQL and build a direct data connection. “By directly connecting Snowflake to Dataverse, we’ll be able to simplify our architecture in a way that’s far easier to manage and better performing. That, combined with the scalability of Dataverse, will help build an even better foundation for our mission critical apps,” says Jackson.

In addition, Encino is planning to use their enhanced Snowflake Power Platform connector to build agents capable of advanced data analysis. Encino manages many fields across a broad geographic region. To capture that data, multiple tables track production across different regions. The agent can look at any custom date range and instantly return a response, a process that would have previously required complex SQL queries. For example, a field operator may ask “What was the production in the northeast region between Jan thru April and how many different wells did that come from?” Using an agent makes retrieving that data easy, returning the production numbers from those wells with a high degree of accuracy.

In addition, Encino Energy is rolling out the Snowflake connector and Dataverse to build agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio capable of advanced data analysis of all production data. The agent can look at any operator’s question and—leveraging semantic indexing powered by Dataverse search—instantly return a response. For example, a field operator may ask “What locations have had the most downtime, and what equipment or process is causing the problem?” This query would have previously required complex SQL queries and corresponding updates to applications and dashboards. With the agent, operators get dramatically faster access to data that can help prioritize tasks for improved efficiency. 

Power Automate Reduced administrative processes

Along with field operations, Encino is also using Power Platform to streamline internal processes back in the office. For example, an invoicing pre-approval process that used to involve hundreds of emails between employees can now be completed with a just few clicks.

The application makes use of AI Builder in Power Automate and a document processing model which extracts details from invoices. A dashboard displays confidence levels showing the estimated accuracy of the model, enabling reviewers to quickly spot check the extracted data. “We have been really impressed with the accuracy of our AI model. We rarely see instances where corrections are needed,” says Pareso.

Once an invoice is ready for approval, it’s routed automatically to approvers using a cloud flow Power Automate, then out to the vendor on the invoice. The app also leverages other components which work seamlessly with Power Platform, such as Microsoft Teams Approvals as well as the Encodian connector, for easier management of PDFs.

The app has cut administrative time significantly. “When we looked into the process, we discovered that this app – which only took me a few weeks to build – is saving one employee literally hundreds of hours a year,” says Pareso. “Power Platform enables us to address those smaller, lower priority processes quickly and efficiently. Together, it’s adding up to very significant savings over time.”

 A more productive workforce

Helping makers like Pareso spin up innovative applications so quickly has convinced Jackson, a long-time professional developer, about the real value of Power Platform for Encino.

He’s also been impressed at the advanced functionality available with Power Platform. “As a pro developer, I was initially skeptical of what we could accomplish with low code. But over the past 5 years, I’ve seen Power Platform grow and advance in leaps and bounds, allowing us to build true, enterprise-grade apps,” says Jackson.

His colleagues are equally excited about the future potential of the platform. Most recently, Pareso began exploring Microsoft Copilot Studio. His first project: an AI-driven agent that analyzes activity log data tables for insights into operations. Early results look promising.   

“With Power Platform, we’re getting more out of our data, reducing administrative tasks - and actually making work more enjoyable and productive for employees,” says Pareso.