Kitabı oxu: «OILFIELD SERVICES (Part TWO) LANDMARK»

OILFIELD SERVICES - PART TWO

LANDMARK

How it began?

Once, during one of the many international conferences of oil and gas workers, approaching the stand of the Schlumberger company, a journalist asked one of the major managers of this company, who was in the hall at that moment: "Your company is distinguished by a high level of professionalism of specialists - how do you select your employees?"

1)

We hold regular meetings with third- and fourth-year students at specialized universities and select the most gifted students.

2)

We observe their activities in their final years and send them for practical training in various departments of the company at our expense; pay for their scholarships until graduation.

3)

After defending their diploma, we send them to a six-month course at our Center in the vicinity of the city of Pau (France). After they complete these courses, we conduct a rigorous system of final selection; After which about 60 percent of those whom we recruit remain.

After walking around the exhibition for a while, the journalist approached the Halliburton booth and asked the same question to one of the company's executives. He began the interview with a more extended question, including some of his own assumptions based on a previous interview with a Schlumberger employee. Hoping to get a more detailed description of the sequence of the months-long selection process at Halliburton, his question sounded something like this: "Do you go through the same many months of "path" when choosing the best of the best? The answer puzzled him a little: "NO – we don't bother much," replied a representative of Halliburton: "We just "buy" the best specialists from the Schlumberger Company.

Of course, this is a JOKE, but, as in any joke - there is only a fraction of a joke in it! Having worked for more than twelve years at Schlumberger, I have always been proud to be a member of BIG BLUE. However, the events of the last years of my stay at the company clearly pointed to the fact that the conditions for career growth for me had been significantly reduced, to say the least – I had fallen into the caste of "untouchables" – which meant that sooner or later my career growth would come to a standstill; I will be given an ordinary engineering position (if at all) and sent to the company's office in Hanover to "live" until the next wave of layoffs. In addition, my production experience has become clear proof that all propaganda slogans about loyalty and love for the company are not worth a penny. A company needs you only when it receives much more from you than it invests in your development. As soon as the gradient of your "coefficient of efficiency" becomes negative, you 1) either try to find another application, where you begin to bring positive results again, 2) or simply be fired on the worst terms for you (here it is worth remembering the detailed description given in the previous part of the type of employees of companies that any employer is very happy to hire in departments of 1) personnel management and 2) internal control Work Ethics).

My advice to the reader is "Be constantly on the lookout for a better position or working conditions, no matter what you have at the moment. There is NOTHING but business between you and your employer. Do not trust anyone – you personally have no value – and are just a convenient tool! You can be replaced at any time with a more profitable option – NEVER forget about it!"

The period of my negotiations with the representatives of the Halliburton company in November-December 2003 was a rather difficult stage in my life - so I remember this time very well. I was constantly tormented by remorse – now I am completely calm about such changes, but then, as a person brought up in the sixties and eighties, I had completely different ideas about the labor code and the ethics of relations between employer and employee. The most significant and exemplary example of such relationships was the production experience of my parents, who worked at the same enterprise for more than forty years. Fond memories of this will always stay with me. My parents retired in the early eighties, and their pensions were much higher than the monthly salaries of young professionals with engineering degrees, so it seemed that they could afford a decent old age.

Everything changed significantly in the early 90s.

At first, there was the "monetary reform", which practically "zeroed" the savings of pensioners, which were mainly kept "under the mattress". Then - the collapse of the Soviet Union - and the "independence" of Kazakhstan. Next is privatization. My parents worked in the Guryev Geophysical Expedition (GGFE):

https://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_gfe_history/page/0006.htm

https://nik-rech.narod.ru/gallery/album_gfe_guryev/sovecshaniya.htm

This enterprise was privatized. The new "owners" of GGFE already had completely different ideas about business ethics, and one of the primary tasks facing them after the completion of privatization was to eliminate debt obligations in relation to employees and especially pensioners.

Given the level of corruption of the new government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the new "masters" managed to solve the problem in the shortest possible time. But that's another story.

So, we deviated a little. It was at this moment in my life that an employee of one of the recruitment agencies in the UK called me and offered to discuss "one interesting issue". The conversation was constructive, we liked each other (the main thing is that I fully satisfied his wishes for the candidate) and we agreed to move on quickly. At the next stage, I organized a meeting with the General Director of LANDMARK GRAPHICS for the Eurasia region. To my great surprise, Ronan Mooney's name was Ronan Mooney. Ronan was a former employee of Schlumberger Industries, where he had worked as CFO for the European Region in the mid-1990s and was directly subordinate to Dominique Fache. We crossed paths a lot in Kyiv (working on a project for NJSC NaftoGaz of Ukraine). More detailed information about these events is set out in the FIRST PART of the book.

The conversation with Ronan was more like a meeting of memories of good friends after a long separation than an interview with a candidate. Ronan described in detail his vision of my transition to the company - for him, the issue was resolved even before our face-to-face meeting. The conversation was of great importance to me as well, as Ronan brought me up to speed and briefly described the main problems existing in the structure of the Company in the Eurasian region, which included the following countries: Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The main idea of the corporate management of LANDMARK when appointing Ronan as the General Manager of the Eurasia Region was the desire to change the existing structure of doing business in the Region, which moved further and further away from the corporate standards of the company and became more and more like the structure of a private Russian cooperative with shadow business schemes. It was necessary to establish transparency in the business procedure and to completely move away from the use of many "gray" schemes that were widely implemented not only within the LANDMARK division, but also in other Halliburton product lines in Russia (a more detailed description will be set out below).

Following my conversation with Ronan, I met with Jonathan Lewis, who at the time was the head of Landmark's operations in the Eastern Hemisphere. We met in London and at the end of our conversation, Jonathan made me an offer to join Landmark on the following terms:

1)

Given my background at Schlumberger (Halliburton's main competitor), I had to go through six to eight months of adaptation in the team to the position of a leading specialist in the sales department for Key Customers (TNK – BP, LUKOIL, ROSNEFT and Surgutneftegaz); The divisions of GAZPROM were not included in the "area of my responsibility" - a little later I will explain why;

2)

At the end of the "quarantine", I was to replace Ronan Mooney in his position as General Manager of LANDMARK Eurasia; Ronan's further relocation within the Halliburton Company had already been agreed.

The offer was certainly very tempting, but, on the other hand, very risky: in a short time I had to "work" with a professional team of people who had been my main competitors for more than twelve years. I knew many of them personally. The task before me was not easy, but, definitely, doable.

So, on February 16, 2004, I entered the LANDMARK office for the first time as an employee. I often imagined this moment in my mind, and each time I was overwhelmed by a slight excitement, despite the fact that in my almost forty-four years I had to go through a lot of extreme situations.

My "registration" was quite friendly, which was a big surprise for me. Many technical support employees did not know me personally and it did not matter much to them - well, a nice young guy came, smiles nicely and jokes, and what is unusual about this? For the employees of the sales department, the situation was special - I was personally acquainted with almost all of them and had crossed paths more than once at official tender events. Nevertheless, business is business, and I made this clear to them during our first meeting. We had to solve common problems, and I did not consider each of them as my competitors. Ronan, who was present at the meeting, in his speech once again emphasized the exclusivity of my position as an informal head of the LANDMARK’s sales department in the Russian Federation and in the Republic of Belarus. Well, since Belarus was under American sanctions at that time, my main task was to coordinate commercial activities only in the Russian Federation.

In the classic organizational structure of the company, the sales department consists of employees, each of whom is responsible for working with a particular Customer and its affiliated structures, regardless of the geography of the branches. This approach provides flexibility in the development of sales schemes and technical support for the Customer's specialists, and also helps to avoid various kinds of misunderstandings in communications.

I was completely immersed in the process of analyzing the relationship between my Team and existing/potential Customers. In a few days, I was quite well versed in the overall situation and even figured out the details of the priority projects at the moment. The bulk of LANDMARK's sales in Russia were carried out through a "sales agent"/reseller – a company called VERYSELL Projects, while for other countries, such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, there were alternative mechanisms, which I will discuss later.

VERYSELL (Projects)

Established in the 90s, VERYSELL initially started its business as a distributor in the field of telecommunications and IT technologies. In the 2000s, the company was formed as a "system integrator" in the field of IT technologies.

One of the financial privileges of the company "VERYSELL" was that it was exempt from paying value added tax (according to unofficial data, the founders of the company had close ties with the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation and enjoyed the benefits of participants in hostilities during the Afghan events). Nevertheless, all contracts concluded by VERYSELL as a system integrator considered these taxes, which automatically went to the profit of the "system integrator". Thus, it is not difficult to understand the "close" commercial ties between the former management of LANDMARK and the management of VERYSELL. Almost all LANDMARK software and consulting services in Russia until 2003 were supplied only through VERYSELL.

In addition to the fact that VERYSELL did not pay VAT (which was paid by the end user), the company received additional discounts of 15-25% (dealer discount) for all LANDMARK contracts. Strange as it may seem, but the representatives of the LANDMARK financial service in London were well informed about such a "scheme" and turned a blind eye to it, apparently not wanting to understand the details (the main thing is "the caravan is going"). Apparently, the share of the management of the end users of the software was taken into account in such a scheme of "cooperation", since all of them were both for such cooperation and with great pleasure worked only through a "system integrator".

The coordinator of business relations with the LANDMARK company was Sergey Levin. I met him literally the next day after I came to the company. I was surprised by the rather confident and in its own way even boorish behavior of this man. With all his appearance and behavior, he constantly demonstrated the "exceptional importance" of his position. Outwardly, he resembled a "pinch" (pickpocket) from a provincial town.

At that time, the employee of the LANDMARK sales department in charge of doing business with GAZPROM and its branches was a specialist of the LANDMARK sales department, Eduard, a lanky, clumsy young man who came to "conquer" Moscow from Belarus in the early 90s. Thus, according to the "tacit agreement", all issues related to business with PJSC GAZPROM were discussed within the company only between Eduard and S. Levin. Ronan did not delve into this business much, since he had enough business in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Therefore, I was not particularly surprised by Eduard's tireless desire to remove me from any direct contacts with the Management of the Information Technology Department of PJSC GAZPROM, which was then headed by Sergey Mityanin.

At the time of my arrival at LANDMARK, the tripartite contract between LANDMARK, GAZPROM PJSC and VERYSELL for corporate access of GAZPROM branches to LANDMARK software was in the final stage of development, and the last approvals from the services of GAZPROM PJSC remained.

The main structure of the contract was built as follows: all divisions of PJSC GAZPROM received access to the LANDMARK software through the VERYSELL company, and the distribution of specific licenses and their number among the branches was carried out from the head office of IT of PJSC GAZPROM.

Software licenses were provided on a lease basis with monthly payments and the process was personally controlled by Sergey Mityanin.

The amount of rent was approximately 300 thousand US dollars per month. Software licenses were supplied both to the Head Office and to all branches of PJSC GAZPROM, including industry institutes and subsidiaries.

Landmark's job was to ensure that software licenses were supplied, while users had to purchase the necessary hardware themselves.

Hardware was also supplied to all enterprises of PJSC GAZPROM by the system integrator – VERYSELL.

After installing the software, users provided VERYSELL with a certificate of installation of the software on the hardware in the end-user's office.

VERYSELL provided the certificate received from the end user to LANDMARK. The date of receipt of this act by LANDMARK was the date of commencement of payments for the lease.

The above structure of the contract seems to be logical: the System Integrator acquires the necessary hardware for the end User, then installs LANDMARK software on it and fully "accompanies" the technological process. There is nothing to tidy up, but there is one nuance and I will talk about it a little later.

My meeting with Mr. S. Mityanin took place in the presence of S. Levin and Eduard (this was his condition for the meeting). As soon as we entered his office, instead of greeting, he immediately threw me the following phrase: "I hope you are informed that PJSC GAZPROM will sign a contract only with a system integrator, i.e. with the VERYSELL company. Thus, the issue has already been resolved – we must follow only this path. Nevertheless, I had to calculate all the possible risks associated with using such a scheme.

The contract was signed by the three parties on the above terms, and we began to implement it.

Under the contract, LANDMARK transferred the license keys for the software to the VERYSELL company for "storage".

The installation of hardware and software was to be carried out by VERYSELL technical specialists, but since there were none, all the technical work was done by LANDMARK specialists. The corporate management of LANDMARK was not aware of such a scheme, or perhaps it was, but simply did not want to bother: the main thing was that payments were made regularly.

Weeks and months passed, but we still did not receive the signed acts, and therefore could not "recognize" the money; The main explanation we received from both VERYSELL and representatives of the IT Service of PJSC Gazprom is: 1) the hardware has not yet been delivered to the end-user offices; 2) the hardware has been supplied, but the work has not begun due to a delay in training, etc., etc.

In the end, we received the acceptance certificates for the delivery of software licenses and the start of work with a delay of several months, although similar acceptance certificates between the representatives of the IT service of PJSC GAZPROM and VERYSELL were signed on time. On such a deception, LANDMARK lost about 1.5 million US dollars.

After quite a lot of effort, we managed to change the terms of the contract in a year and throw VERYSELL out of all "intermediate" schemes. At the corporate level, I was given full support, and I was also able to get the dismissal of those LANDMARK employees who were involved in the VERYSELL business in one way or another.

It should also be noted that many LANDMARK Customers were very disappointed and even specifically dissatisfied with the fact of the "liquidation" of VERYSELL as a system integrator – this is understandable, over the years of using this approach to business, huge sums were withdrawn from official circulation, and many did not want to lose this method of additional income.

Perhaps I was careless about the fact that my efforts to dismantle the corrupt LANDMARK-VERYSELL business scheme involved a certain degree of risk to my health – but I was still quite young at the time and had a much simpler attitude towards such things, and the support from the Halliburton Management was a solid shield for my protection.