Austin, Texas and Midland, Texas (January 21, 2019) – Enverus, the leading energy SaaS and data analytics company, and Concho Resources (NYSE: CXO) today announced they will bring to market a new product, Audit Analytics, which enables energy companies to reduce costs by identifying erroneous overbilling in high volume shale operations.
Audit Analytics builds on Concho’s proprietary vendor auditing program that it developed using data created by OpenInvoice and OpenTicket, industry leading Enverus SaaS applications for oilfield business automation. Audit Analytics quickly identifies overbilling situations and provides evidence that can be used when seeking compensation. This new solution underscores how business automation solutions and data can be paired to improve the modern energy value chain and reduce costs.
“Operating efficiently is a key priority for Concho, and as part of our efforts to reduce costs, we developed a solution that identifies and mitigates vendor overbilling,” said Jack Harper, President of Concho Resources. “We are proud to work with Enverus to bring our system to market as Audit Analytics. We believe there is significant demand for this type of solution as other companies across our industry look to eliminate fraud and strengthen cost controls.”
“Concho Resources is one of the largest unconventional shale producers in the Permian with a strong internal vendor auditing program. Concho’s industry leading work has demonstrated that when the right data and analytics are effectively integrated and analyzed, the efficiency of auditing can be significantly improved and therefore the savings multiplied,” noted Jeff Hughes, CEO and President at Enverus.
“Cost efficiency is the name of the game now and Concho is the perfect company to work with. From reducing costs, to monitoring human error, to uncovering potentially finable, illegal activities, the upside to expanding this system, and applying it industry wide, could be enormous. We believe the system will soon help many customers identify tens of millions of dollars – possibly hundreds of million dollars – in fraudulent activity and wasted capital,” Hughes said.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, in its 2018 annual report, states that the energy industry experiences elevated levels of corruption relative to other industries. Some common miscalculations and examples of fraud in the oil and gas service sector include:
- Falsification of ticket and billing information such as driving hours, loads hauled, or number of workers
- Inaccurate billing when an agreement exists
- Providing and billing for work that was not ordered
- Billing after incomplete or insufficient work
- Illegal load collection or dumping
- Forged signatures and stamps
“Concho’s ground-breaking work has already proven the ability to identify both unintentional billing errors and illicit activity which have significant financial benefit,” said Chris Dinkler, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enverus’ business automation division. “But we know there are thousands of businesses out there experiencing similar problems that need help identifying them. Audit Analytics will build on the wide market success of OpenInvoice and OpenTicket to quickly and efficiently address these opportunities with tremendous value impact for our industry.”
Enverus and Concho are excited that Audit Analytics will improve transparency and reduce costs. The companies are exploring opportunities to adapt the technology for use outside the energy industry.
To learn how to begin using business automation solutions to identify erroneous or fraudulent activities, Enverus encourages existing customers to contact their account manager, and new customers to contact a sales representative via www.enverus.com.
