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Predictive Analysis on the Worldwide Energy Sector

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PAWES (Predictive Analysis on the Worldwide Energy Sector)

Período documentado: 2018-06-01 hasta 2018-11-30

The energy industry has endured major changes over the past few decades, and the energy market has become significantly volatile. All financial and industrial players need relevant information in order to survive. Yet, paradoxically, even though the energy industry produces and uses enormous amounts of data, there is no viable way to collect these wide and diverse data that will ensure better decision-making and reduce risk in the energy sector.

Kayrros was founded in February 2016 to tackle this challenge, driven by the ambition to bring transparency to a market that has traditionally been opaque with the goal of becoming the most comprehensive data provider in the energy sector. Kayrros sources data from across the globe, harnessing sources such as satellite imageries, public reports or social media. Kayrros then turns this information into insights, using an integrated system of machine-learning and intelligent algorithms filtered by an expanding team of industry-leading experts and data scientists. This approach allows Kayrros insights to have the advantage of timeliness over other sources, whether commercial or governmental. In addition, the Kayrros comprehensive coverage makes its data stronger: every step in the energy journey is connected.

However, the magnitude of R&D work to carry out is tremendous and needs to be rationalized in order to meet Kayrros’ ambitions. R&D developments need to be done in a way that foster and exploit synergies, reduces cost and time to market, and extracts the most value from Kayrros data to better answer customer priorities. The final goal is being able to fasten Kayrros’ deployment and growth by maximizing the company’s impact on the market with a refined commercial offer supported by reinforced scale-up capacities.

This is why the Phase 1 SME Instrument project was dedicated to optimizing technical roadmaps, including information provided and the technical infrastructure needed to deliver this information to customers. Based on customers feedback, the objective of the project was also to improve the product marketing strategy and develop the business network of the company. All in all, these findings led Kayrros to design a new commercial offer during the period of the project, and consequently to refine Kayrros’ deployment plan and economic forecasts.
The starting point of Kayrros’ positioning during this project was to work on acquiring new data sources. In order to capitalize on previously-acquired data sources—and ease their exploitation for a large array of publications and indicator development—Kayrros had to rethink its IT infrastructure. The approach was to treat the process in a modular way in order to valorize the data at each step of the data management chain.

The IT infrastructure overhaul allowed Kayrros to develop a new strategy regarding the structuration of its commercial offer. In fact, this global project is expected to help the company go beyond its current subscription model by granting access to a portfolio of indicators and leveraging new customer relationships in product development.

Kayrros will keep enriching its current products, as well as developing new indicators according to market needs.

By introducing a co-development service with the customers into the Kayrros offer, Kayrros has the opportunity to create an efficient way of supporting the implementation of the final indicator development roadmap. Based on the mapping of Kayrros’ mastered data sources and data analysis capacities, this indicator development roadmap includes the following tasks:
• Evaluation of the additional R&D required to prioritize indicators with both lower development costs and a smaller time-to-market. Therefore, indicators that capitalize on pre-mastered data sources and algorithms will be highly prioritized.
• Combination of market forecasts and customer request surveys to prioritize indicators that are in high demand
• Estimation of the potential revenue by indicator to prioritize those with a high potential revenue

Kayrros also engaged in a product marketing analysis regarding its subscription model throughout the project. The initial goal was to package Kayrros’ publications and indicators in order to optimize the value—and therefore the price—of them. Although requiring continuous development, this task has already generated interesting ideas to develop; for example, the project outlined the need to gain additional customer feedback and enforce new measures to improve their usage and the value added that they get from Kayrros products. The identified measures are the following: the creation of a customer desk and a technical central service to supervise and manage customers relationships; to hire and train the related personnel; and to ensure ongoing customer satisfaction by coordinating the efforts of Kayrros’ commercial and technical teams.

Additionally, besides the product marketing work on the subscription model, Kayrros also evaluated two new revenue streams integrated into the Kayrros offer. These economic forecasts—and their subsequent conclusions—were merged into a comprehensive business plan outlining Kayrros’ ambitions (turnover, market coverage and shares, etc.) and operational actions to be carried out in the next few years. By 2025, Kayrros forecasts 52 m€ in revenue with over 200 employees.
Within the project, the innovation focused mainly on acquiring a wide scope of data sources combined with various analytical methods to expand into covering new issues. From the findings of the project, Kayrros made significant improvements such as:
• Increasing the speed and accuracy in identifying relevant information, and keeping it replicable and consistent in time
• Improving the cost effectiveness and flexibility, which is allowing Kayrros to quickly build new indicators since the data management chain is optimized
• Consolidating its market position; with the expansion of its indicators portfolio and technological capacities, Kayrros should be the sole company in the position of providing this niche intelligence
Kayrros forecasts extended over three months, since it’s the period it takes for most of the decisions to be enforced and their effects to be seen. Currently, Kayrros’ forecasts reach a margin error of less than 2% and the company strives to keep improving the precision of its indicators.

Regarding the specific results of this project, Kayrros established a roadmap addressing the development of its publications and indicator portfolio, along with another roadmap dedicated to the new IT infrastructure. Kayrros is now aligned to implement these roadmaps during the Phase 2 of the SME Instrument project. This will boost Kayrros’ commercial offering deployment while reducing technical and financial uncertainties and improving scale-up capacities to support commercial growth.
Technical evolutions to be implanted in Phase 2 of the SME Instrument project will lead to setting up new functions within the Kayrros organization (customer desk, technical central service) and adjusting the commercial strategy (services offer along the data value chain in order to secure the customer relationship; both a commercial and technical interface with the customers).
Additionally, Kayrros will be pursuing complementary work regarding the product marketing of the subscription model in order to develop new approaches to collecting and approaching customer feeback. This growth strategy will finally be completed by a global effort regarding the development of a Kayrros business network. By 2025, the SME Instrument project should lead the company to generating a revenue of 52 m€ and growing to reach 200 employees.

Kayrros in perspective with EU global Energy information and policies

In a more global point of view and based on Kayrros’ solution performance, the entire energy industry—as well as the other stakeholders that have an interest in this information—will be able to take quicker and more accurate decisions. The European Commission’s energy policy decisions are underpinned by analyses and impact assessments. Moreover, mathematical models and tools are used to assess policy effectiveness, and to evaluate the potential consequences of policy proposals. Even if the EU has its own tools and methods to monitor the European Oil & Gas market, Kayrros is presenting global information, i.e. information regarding the supply of non-EU countries or storage worldwide.
The information that currently exists in this sector is either not fully reliable (when it exists) or unavailable. Therefore, Kayrros solutions offer an alternative for the EU to benefit from this intelligence and fuel the European Energy Security Strategy. As stated in the Energy Security Strategy released in May 2014, long-term measures include conducting risk assessments, and Kayrros intelligence will be integral in better anticipating stresses that may occur in the supply sector. Another example of how this project may improve challenges faced by the EU is the promotion of long-term certainty and predictability for investors as stated in the regulation on the governance of the Energy Union issued on November 30 2016. Kayrros solutions will have direct and strong impacts on investors since the company’s services target them specifically. Finally, the 2030 Energy Strategy proposes the development of new indicators regarding the energy system. Among the issues identified, the diversification of supply which—as highlighted by the Energy Security Strategy and the Strategic Energy Technology Plan—will be based largely on renewable energy. Consequently, indicators on renewable energy and emissions developed within the project will be key in reaching this objective.
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