ExxonMobil
In recent years, there have been many ambitious claims made regarding the power of data. One of the most extravagant claims has been that data is the new oil! A 2017 Economist article went so far as to argue that The world’s most valuable resource is not oil, but data. A 2019 Forbes article, Data is the New Oil, and That’s a Good Thing, expanded upon this notion, describing data as “the ultimate renewable resource”.
I couldn’t resist posing this question to Andrew Curry, who leads the Central Data Office for ExxonMobil, commonly known as Exxon. So, is data the new oil? Curry laughed before explaining, “Once you use your supply of oil, it is exhausted. Data is very different. The more that you use it, the more valuable it becomes. Data is a resource. You can turn that data into an asset. It can also become a liability if neglected or misused”. Curry should know. He has been employed by ExxonMobil for 24 years, so he knows the business and the industry well, and as data leader, he understands the tremendous value that data can bring to an organization.
For those few who may not know, ExxonMobil is one of the world’s largest oil and gas suppliers and is a Fortune 5 company. With a history dating back to 1870, and the founding of Standard Oil by John D. Rockefeller, Exxon has grown through the years, culminating with the 1999 merger of Exxon with Mobil Oil to create Exxon Mobil Corporation. Today, ExxonMobil is a top oil and gas producer in the United States as well as one of the largest U.S. corporations with 2023 revenue of greater than $350B, and operations in more than 60 countries across 6 continents.
Functioning as the Central Data Office Manager for ExxonMobil, Curry brings the perspectives and experience of a company veteran and insider who knows the organization, its operations, and its culture well. His profile stands in contrast to the growing phenomena of short-term-tenured Data Officers who are recruited into an organization as agents of change and are apt to move from organization to organization after a few-year stint. An industry survey I have conducted since 2012 has shown a decline in recent years in the number of company veterans holding the CDO role — down from 32% in 2018 to just to 13% in 2022. A growing number of companies have opted for more transient CDOs who arrive as change agents who have held the role at multiple organizations. In contrast, possessing a deep understanding of the business can bring considerable value and an understanding of how an organization operates, especially for such an extraordinarily large and complex global company.
From a data and technology perspective, ExxonMobil operated for many decades in a highly federated, hub-and-spoke model, across business functions. As part of an effort to position ExxonMobil for the decades ahead, the company embarked upon an Enterprise Digital Strategy initiative to transform the speed and efficiency of business operations and centralize core business processes. As a result of this effort, a recommendation was made to establish a Central Data Office. Formally established in April 2021, the mandate of the Central Data Office is to maximize the value of data across the corporation and ensure that data is a top corporate priority. ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods reinforced this message during a recent shareholder earnings call, noting “We see a lot of opportunity to bring together our data and our process, and harmonize those and do this consistently across all of the organization”.
Organizationally the Central Data Office operates as an enterprise business function reporting into Global Business Services within ExxonMobil, not as a part of the company’s IT organization. The mandate of the Central Data Office is to support global business process owners and functions, comprising supply chain, trading, operations, sales and marketing, and finance. While the Central Data Office owns and maintains the data platform, analytic activities remain the responsibility of the business functions, which operate in close coordination with the data office. Monthly meetings across 20 distinct business teams reinforce a strong partnership between the Central Data Office and the business services functions.
Business use cases are developed for each business function. These use cases leverage data from across the corporation and are then used to improve speed of service and optimize business processes. Core to these efforts is the use of data products, which refer to the application of reusable data drawn from many sources that serve as building blocks to ensure data quality and enable consistent calculations across the corporation. Curry compares these to Lego blocks, noting that “The use of data products enables us to accelerate time to delivery, increasing the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of business processes”. Examples of data product-supported use cases include cross-selling chemical and lubricant customers, use of predictive analytics to support vessel tracking, supply chain optimization of “bringing the product to port” and the delivery of rail cars, trading support through understanding whether shipments may be delayed, and optimizing the $55B in net cash provided by operating activities.
I asked Andrew Curry about the outlook ahead and how ExxonMobil sees emerging AI capabilities impacting the oil and gas business in the years ahead. He noted that AI is not something that is new to ExxonMobil and that the company has engaged teams of PhD data scientists for many years to support business functions across the organization. Curry anticipates increasing demand resulting from the rapid emergence of Generative AI, and points to the need for additional data and process governance, noting that “GenAI is but one of the AI tools in our bag”. He adds however that ExxonMobil will move forward with appropriate safeguards and cautions that success requires understanding both what problems should be solved using GenAI and what data is fit for GenAI.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, Curry notes that when the day is done education at all levels of the company on the value, importance, opportunity, and role that data can play in enhancing the business operations of the company is what brings everything together for ExxonMobil. Curry points out the criticality of data literacy and the necessity of building a strong data culture within the organization, something that many organizations continue to struggle with. Curry sees this as a prerequisite that is essential to business success. He concludes, “We are very focused on leadership education. Building a data culture is a long-term investment. It takes time and effort, but we are seeing the payback from our efforts”. Indeed, for ExxonMobil, data is much more than just the new oil.
