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Sales KPIs for oilfield services companies: ten measures that matter, each with its formula and the export it comes from

The ten sales KPIs an oilfield services or equipment company should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: operator wallet share by basin, activity-weighted coverage, service lines per operator, rental fleet utilisation by operator, operator mapping completeness, bid win rate, price realisation against master service agreements, operator concentration, days sales outstanding by operator, and job margin by basin. Also the three measures most companies miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.

The short answerAn oilfield services company should run on ten sales measures: share of each operator's spend by basin; coverage weighted by current activity, meaning rigs and completions; service lines used per operator; rental fleet utilisation by operator; completeness of the mapping from invoiced entities to operators; bid and tender win rate; price realisation against master service agreement rates; operator concentration; days sales outstanding by operator; and job margin by basin and service line. They come from the ledger, public rig and permit data, the rental system, the bid log, the agreements file and receivables. The three most often missed are activity-weighted coverage, because a call plan built on last year's revenue visits operators who have laid down rigs; operator mapping, since operators invoice through many subsidiaries and joint ventures; and wallet share by basin, which a company-wide figure hides.

An oilfield services company sells to operators whose spending follows their rig count, basin by basin, through entities that rarely share a name. The measures that matter weight everything by activity and start with knowing who the operator is.

The ten measures

# Measure Formula Export What it tells you
1 Operator wallet share by basin Revenue from the operator on the service line ÷ operator's estimated spend on it, from wells × cost per well Ledger; public well and rig data Operators where you hold a tenth of the work
2 Activity-weighted coverage Activity of operators contacted within cadence ÷ total activity in the basin CRM; rig and permit data Whether the reps are where the rigs are
3 Service lines per operator Lines with revenue ÷ lines relevant to the operator's programme Ledger Single-line relationships
4 Rental fleet utilisation by operator Days on rent ÷ days available, by asset class and operator Rental system Idle fleet; operators who stopped renting
5 Operator mapping completeness Revenue on entities mapped to a parent operator ÷ revenue Ledger; operator master Whether roll-ups can be trusted
6 Bid win rate Bids won ÷ bids decided, by count and value, by basin and line Bid log Where pricing or qualification loses
7 Price realisation against agreement Invoiced rate ÷ agreement rate, by line; discounts given in the field Ledger; agreements file Rates conceded job by job
8 Operator concentration Top five operators' share of revenue and margin, rolled up Ledger; operator master Dependence on a few drilling programmes
9 Days sales outstanding by operator Receivables ÷ average daily revenue, per operator Receivables ledger Operators financing themselves on your invoices
10 Job margin by basin and line Revenue − direct job cost, per job, by basin and service line Job costing Basins where work is won at a loss

Every one of these is computed per account, per account manager and basin, and in total, and every one carries an identity that must hold before the table is shown.

The three most oilfield services companies miss

Activity-weighted coverage. Call plans follow last year's revenue. Rigs move faster than call plans.

Operator mapping. The largest operators are the ones split across the most ledger entities.

Wallet share by basin. A healthy company-wide share can be 40 percent in one basin and 4 in the next.

A worked line

An operator runs eleven rigs in the basin, up from five a year ago. At the company's cost per well it will spend about $31 million on the service line this year. Revenue from it is $2.2 million: 7 percent. It appears in the ledger under four entity names, the largest of which is mapped. The last logged visit was four months ago, because on last year's revenue it ranked fourteenth.

What to drop

Revenue ranking as the call plan. Weight by current activity.

Bids submitted. Win rate by value, by basin.

Fleet size. Utilisation by asset class and operator.

The identities

Table Must hold
Mapping Ledger entities = mapped to an operator + unmapped
Rental Available days = on rent + idle + in maintenance
Bids Bids = won + lost + no award + open
Jobs Job revenue and cost sum to the ledger

A table whose identity fails is a table with a row missing or counted twice. It is not shown until it is fixed.

Who owns what

Measure Owner Reviewed
Activity-weighted coverage Account managers; basin managers Weekly
Rental utilisation; bid win rate Basin managers Monthly
Wallet share; service lines; price realisation Vice president of sales Quarterly
Operator mapping; concentration; days sales outstanding; job margin Sales operations; finance Quarterly

A measure with no owner is a metric, not a KPI; see KPI versus metric versus measure.

Go deeper

The short version

Ten measures from the ledger, public activity data and the rental and bid systems. Map the operators, weight by rigs, and read everything by basin. Covirage computes all of them from the exports oilfield services companies already produce, files only, with the definitions stated and the identities checked. See Covirage for oilfield services companies.

Questions people ask

What is activity-weighted coverage?

Coverage where each operator is weighted by what it is doing now, such as active rigs, permits filed or completions scheduled in the basin, not by what it bought last year. An operator that has doubled its rig count and has not been visited is the largest gap. One that has stopped drilling can be visited less. Public activity data makes this possible weekly.

Why is operator mapping hard?

An operator buys through operating subsidiaries, joint ventures, acquired companies still on old names, and sometimes a drilling contractor. The ledger holds each as a separate customer. Until they are mapped to the parent operator, wallet share, concentration and coverage are all understated for the largest customers.

How is operator wallet estimated?

From activity. Spend on a service line is roughly proportional to wells drilled or completed, at a cost per well the company knows from its own jobs. Wells in the basin times cost per well gives the operator's spend on the line; the company's revenue over that is its share. It is an estimate, and it is far better than none.