Hart Energy IndustryVoice Interview: Pete Waldroop on Riding a Wave of Innovation

W Energy Software’s CEO, Pete Waldroop gave an exclusive interview to Hart Energy’s Industry Voice. Pete discusses how companies can drastically lower G&A spend, why we’re seeing a rush from legacy solutions to SaaS ERP, and his commitment to client success.  Read the full interview below. 

It’s a battle of old vs. new technology, legacy oil & gas software vs. modern cloud-based solutions.  W Energy Software appears to be winning on all fronts – by keeping their clients at the heart of all they do. Today, the oil & gas software space is dominated by a few large legacy software vendors who regularly snap up smaller innovators in order to show increased margins – but this doesn’t always work out well for their clients.  To see a return on their acquisitions, these legacy software providers must continuously hike software fees while leaving solutions to die on the vine by slashing budgets for product development and customer support – all of which lead to deteriorating service quality. Customers are confronted with a mixed bag of old and new software for running core functions like accounting and financials, production operations, land management, and measurement in upstream to pipeline management, terminal management, and plant accounting in midstream.  Combined with high prices, poor or no integration between systems, and users who don’t get the support they need, E&Ps are often saddled with exorbitant costs to run their back office for on-premise software that requires expensive data infrastructure and G&A to manage.

It is exactly this overwhelming cost and lack of innovation that is driving the rush to W Energy Software’s Oil & Gas SaaS ERP platform – built from the ground up on the cloud and growing organically to serve the entire energy value chain. They also practice what they preach with their motto “always do right by the client.”  This model has arrived just in time as energy companies have reached a tipping point with the old school way of doing business.  Upstream and midstream companies are voting with their feet and rushing to a new way of running their business that is equal parts better software and better technology partnership.  W Energy Software is riding this wave of innovation, propelled by this industry-wide movement to leave legacy technology and traditional software vendors for a true software-as-a-service experience (SaaS).

A year ago, W Energy Software wasn’t the household name it is today.  The Tulsa-based company has been a relatively silent partner to the industry since its launch in 2009.  But it’s distinctive approach to building modern SaaS ERP solutions, easy to use screens, and all in one oil & gas cloud platform are some of the reasons W Energy Software has rapidly gained widespread brand recognition in the energy back office.  Its momentum has built steadily in the last decade, but the velocity of growth is accelerating because of the mass migration from legacy, mismatched solutions to the cloud.  W Energy Software reports that it has seen double-digit growth just in the last year as companies look for ways to bring down G&A and technology costs from older ERP systemsWith its roots in midstream accounting and transaction management, W Energy Software now settles more than 40% of the approximately 500 natural gas processing plants in the US.  It has expanded to upstream with solutions it has built-in tight partnership with clients, including next-generation land management software that complements related accounting processes to offer a single upstream ERP solution.

In this interview, Pete Waldroop, W Energy Software’s founder and CEO, suggests that the energy sector has an opportunity to pivot the technology innovation focus from the field to the back office in order to improve business efficiencies and drive down costs. He noted that the companies W energy Software works with are looking to cut G&A by half, one as much as $500M over the next year.  To do this, Waldroop advises companies to evaluate their multitude of on-premise ERP systems, related IT infrastructure, and G&A with an eye toward consolidating their software portfolio on the cloud.

Speaking to the competitive landscape, Waldroop draws a distinct line between W Energy Software’s relentless approach to innovation and its peers whose business model relies on acquiring vs. developing software.  This accounts for the “product soup” of offerings from its competitors that may include multiple types of land management solutions along with different vintages of oil and gas accounting software.  The result is BRAND CONFUSION.

Click to watch Pete Waldroop’s exclusive interview with Hart Energy Industry Voices.