Queen's Award for Enterprise Innovation
For immediate release April 21st 2009
Flare Solutions has won an internationally recognised award for its development and deployment of knowledge management software for oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies. Incorporating an advanced ontological approach, the software enables a company's information assets to be catalogued (tagged), monitored, searched and linked to business processes.
The Queen's Award is the highest honour that can be bestowed on a UK company and represents independent recognition of outstanding achievements in innovation. Her Majesty the Queen conferred the award after approving the recommendation from the Prime Minister.
"We are delighted to win this award, it demonstrates our commitment to delivering practical, innovative metadata solutions", said Glenn Mansfield, Business Development Director.
The information management software, known as the E&P Catalog, was first deployed in 2004; it is now used in over 31 different countries for business activities ranging from exploration assurance through to field development, project and well delivery. According to Graham Ayres, Development Director, "To deliver pragmatic solutions across such a diverse set of users has been a significant challenge that has required some innovative solutions. This award acknowledges our achievements in this field and is a source of tremendous pride to all our development staff and consultants".
At the core of Flare's Information Management approach is a comprehensive E&P information model that links business processes through information structure. This is achieved through the built-in taxonomy & ontology (knowledge map) containing hundreds of thousands of relationships. This approach enables advanced high precision search techniques that allow users to find information easily using plain language. "We won the BCS European Knowledge Management Project Award in December 2006. Winning this second award demonstrates Flare's ability to build on past successes and keep ahead of the game", said Dave Camden, Consulting Director.
One of the advanced functionality techniques, combines process and information completeness in graphical 'document dashboard' views, allowing management easy access to, and management of, their information assets. "This award recognises the years of hard work we have put in as a team, to build an approach which has proven to save companies time looking for information" , said Paul Cleverley, Technical Director.
Flare has operations in The Netherlands and Canada as well as in the UK. Alan Bays, President of Flare Canada , commented, "The rigorous selection process for the Queens Award requires the winner to demonstrate at least 2 years of proven commercial success for the innovation. Our recent growth in export sales has shown there is a strong global demand for our solution".
A celebratory reception will be hosted by the Queen in Buckingham Palace in July.
