What We Faced
Challenge
To meet the demands of a dynamic energy market, upstream oil and gas companies must become more agile, efficient, and digitally connected. For one Houston-based exploration and production company, aging legacy systems were slowing commercial workflows and stalling digital transformation. The company, with strategic assets in the Eagle Ford Shale, Montney, and the Gulf of Mexico, needed a modern solution to unlock efficiency and drive innovation.
Recognizing the need for change, the company partnered with MRE Consulting to enable a transformative shift in its trading operations. The mission was to replace fragmented, manual processes with a modern, scalable solution that could unlock efficiency and support future growth without relying on enhancements to their Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) systems.
In 8 months, MRE delivered a first-of-its-kind Salesforce Sales Cloud solution, purpose-built for upstream marketing and the complexities involved with oil & gas trading. The company now operates with greater agility, clarity, and confidence ready to meet the demands of a changing landscape.
Challenges
Prior to the transformation, the company’s marketing operations were held back by a patchwork of dated tools and disconnected workflows. Key challenges included:
- Rigid Legacy Systems: The ETRM platform functioned more as a static record-keeping tool than an enabler of business processes. It lacked modern UX and the ability to drive better commercial outcomes.
- Manual Workflows and Disconnected Data: Trade activities relied heavily on spreadsheets, emails, and shared repositories resulting in duplicative efforts, inconsistent data access, and elevated risk.
- Lack of Commercial Context/Intent: Business critical details, such as terms, rationale, and decision points were scattered across systems, making it difficult for stakeholders to align and execute with confidence.
- Disconnected Teams and Tools: Teams struggled to coordinate effectively without a centralized source of truth. Key processes like contract management, bid capture, and deal management were disjointed and opaque.
- Inefficient Reporting & Visibility: Data fragmentation led to outdated or incomplete reporting. Leadership lacked real-time insight into deal status, project progression, or commercial performance.
- Integration Gaps: There was no direct connection between trades, counterparties, contracts, production assets, and delivery locations forcing users to consult multiple sources to find accurate information.
These challenges were not just technical, they directly impacted collaboration, obscured connections between key data points, and prevented rapid reporting.
Implemented Technologies
SALESFORCE SALES CLOUD, DOCUSIGN, SAP PI (API Intergration with Allegro)
What We Did
Solution
MRE Consulting served as a strategic digital transformation partner by implementing a comprehensive Salesforce solution tailored to meet the unique needs of upstream oil and gas marketing. The solution was built on Sales Cloud and integrated with both Allegro and DocuSign.
Key solution highlights included:
- Deal Lifecycle Management: The Salesforce object model and embedded workflows were configured to support market bid capture, trade conversion, and deal management. Every deal clearly references targeted assets and volumes, aligning strategic intent with commercial execution.
- Allegro Integration: Using SAP PI, Trades entered in Salesforce now flow directly into Allegro, enabling tighter alignment between sales planning and commercial outcomes.
- DocuSign DocGen: Automated generation of crude deal sheets and natural gas trade confirmations, eliminating manual document formatting and accelerating document delivery.
- Case & Contact Management: External communications and internal initiatives are logged and linked to their corresponding strategic projects & industry connections. Complete with tasks, meetings, email threads, and supporting documentation.
- Asset & Outage Management: Production assets are modeled in Salesforce including embedded support for automated calculations based on forecasted production. Assets are now linked to Equity Partners, Trades, and related Outage Events.
- Counterparty 360: The new system provides a unified view of each Counterparty, complete with hierarchies and centralized attributes. Counterparties are directly associated with related agreements, documents, bids, and trades.
- Automated Communications: Lightning Email Templates support acknowledgment messages for new, amended, or cancelled trades sent directly from Salesforce.
To support adoption, MRE also delivered end user guides, UAT test scripts, and hands on training sessions with the Marketing team.
What We Delivered
Results
This engagement represents a major step forward in upstream trading modernization. By implementing a scalable Salesforce platform alongside Allegro, the company is moving beyond legacy limitations and toward a more connected, intelligent trading environment.
The transformation has already begun to yield meaningful improvements:
- Business Context Visibility: Traders and managers now have access to bids, contracts, trades, supply assets, and counterparty data. Relationships across marketing operations, such as equity ties, delivery points, and asset production hierarchies are clearly visible and allow for reporting across the organization.
- Increased Collaboration: The team now operates from a single shared source of truth. Processes such as bid capture and deal approvals are interconnected fostering better communication and accountability across the department.
- User Satisfaction: The VP of Marketing praised the platform’s usability and is actively aligning team workflows to maximize system value. Early feedback highlights the intuitive interface, improved data access, and reduced reliance on other tools.
- Data Quality & Standardization: Key data fields and workflows have been standardized. System validations, automations, and structured lookups have reduced inconsistencies and established a foundation for better master data governance.
- Enhanced Reporting & Analytics: The new solution enables dynamic reporting on supply asset hierarchies, traded volumes, and key performance metrics, providing stakeholders with actionable insights across the portfolio.
- Built for Scale: The Salesforce foundation was designed to accommodate future business needs, such as additional Allegro integrations and the flexibility to scale across departments.
With future phases already planned to include pricing and position management functionalities, this is just the beginning of their journey. While formal KPIs are still being measured, the initial results reflect increased transparency, better collaboration, and improved reporting capabilities. MRE Consulting is proud to serve as their trusted implementation and digital transformation partner supporting a solution that meets today’s needs while anticipating the complexities of tomorrow.
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