Charting New Territory
Inside the Start-up Revolutionizing Engineering Reporting
Most people who spend their time generating technical reports have, at one point or another, “lost it” at Microsoft Word for arbitrarily changing their report formatting or relocating a table to an inconvenient spot. Chances are you’ve also presented data in your report by including appendix after appendix of static tables and charts in an attempt to make sure everything you analysed is included in your deliverable. These issues aren't just time-consuming—they're costly. Employing experienced engineers or specialists to format reports isn't an efficient use of their skills, which could be better spent on tasks they’re actually trained for. Moreover, as I’ve spent more time recently staring at PDF documents, I can’t help but wonder—in a world of digitalization and automation - is this really the best way to communicate technical work?
Thankfully, Mike Putrino and his Perth-based software company, Skyo Digital, are tackling these challenges head-on. Skyo is challenging the status quo in technical reporting by introducing a platform that enables engineers to communicate their work outcomes more effectively through interactive reports.
Skyo’s vision is to provide the leading digital solution for interactive reports as an alternative to traditional reports (e.g. PDFs). Skyo is doing this by working directly with companies who want to see a change in the way data, analysis and reports are handed over at the end of a project, and to ensure that reports and data stay together in a convenient and effective way.
Pontem Analytics and Skyo have teamed up to pilot this platform on a local flow assurance project. Flow assurance is the perfect candidate for interactive reports owing to the large amounts of simulation data and calculations performed during the studies which presents a significant challenge when trying to communicate through a 2D static figure or table.
We sat down with Mike recently to get an update on Skyo’s rapid journey and what the future holds.
What inspired you to start Skyo, and what specific gap in the engineering industry are you aiming to fill with your software?
We saw that there was a change in the adoption of digital technology, particularly in engineering, where engineers had started to use digital enablers like Python to simulate far more of the solution space than traditionally possible. This led to the problem of being able to distil and effectively communicate these outputs to customers. We had seen attempts to condense complex datasets into PowerBI reports which were clumsy and abstracted from the actual study, and even attempts to put 4-dimensional plots, based on thousands of data points, into a typical PDF report! We knew there must be a better way to do this.
Skyo’s reporting allows the analysis narrative to be accompanied by interactive objects like charts, tables and 3D objects, with the data literally inside the same report.
How do you see the future of interactive reporting in engineering evolving, and where do you see Skyo fitting into that future?
We see very clearly that digital reporting will supersede traditional PDF reports for data-driven studies in the near future. Data produced during a study is as valuable to a customer as the analysis of those data and copying and pasting digital content into a Word document is as good as destroying it. Customers are already asking for engineering documents to be collated together, with common design data tethered between them and this trend will increase. We also see the emergence of AI for knowledge discovery and 100% digitalised content significantly enables this.
Skyo is meeting these requirements and delivering a solution that aims to be easy to use, improves the quality of deliverables and meets the requirements for document management on both the author and consumer side of the equation. There are hundreds of reasons why interactive, digital reports are the way of the future - right down to the simplest of things like A4 being a waste of screen real estate! We aim to provide THE format for digital deliverables in engineering.
Can you explain how your interactive reports differ from traditional static PDFs, and what value do they bring to your users?
Certainly! Skyo digital reports combine analysis with interactive objects such as charts, tables, graphs, 3D objects, maps, and many other digital objects. The structure of a report can follow a traditional style, with executive summary, basis, methodology, analysis and outcomes, with the added advantage of providing a reader with interactivity. Such interactivity includes allowing a user to filter data and have the corresponding text update depending on the filter, allowing a user to add data to charts and to drill down into data. The reports also allow base models, basis data and other input files used in the analysis to be embedded for future reference. Revision control of data and narrative is also performed through Git style revision, providing unparalleled visibility of historical revisions. PDFs are one-offs, disjointed, and completely abstracted from the data that produced them – Skyo reports are the opposite.
As an author of a report, the most common issue we hear is that the value of a study is eroded when expensive engineers have to painstakingly author and format a complex report full of tables and charts. Skyo alleviates as much of that pain as possible by streamlining how data is displayed, how analysis is published, and how brand and quality is preserved, ultimately producing a better deliverable.
For readers or consumers of a Skyo report, having access to all data, outcomes and analysis across studies in one place – and digitally – simplifies complexity, increases project quality, shortens revision cycle time, saves time problem solving, and reduces the need for repeat work.
What has been the biggest challenge in the development of Skyo so far, and how have you addressed it?
Creating a paradigm shift is difficult. We are challenging the way things have been done historically and providing a vision of where things are headed. Bringing people along that journey isn’t easy, especially when those people are under time pressure, cost pressure and, in some cases, not empowered to come along a change journey. Finding the right people and partners who are empowered and prepared to come along with us has been the most difficult. You know the story of the Little Red Hen? Sometimes it feels like that. The best part about that analogy is that we’re confident in the change and that everyone will want some bread in the end!
Choosing the right partners to develop, inspire and nurture confidence together has been key to our journey to date.
How do you see Pontem Analytics fitting into Skyo’s journey?
We see Pontem Analytics as being technically progressive and ambitious. This fits right in with our ethos of challenging the paradigm and developing digital technology to change the game. Collaborators willing to pilot our technology and work closely with our development and delivery team are key ingredients in the recipe for success. Pontem is clearly this type of collaborator and we look forward to further collaboration.
Like Pontem Analytics, Skyo has just begun its journey to produce state of the art solutions for the engineering industry. On the first anniversary of Skyo Digital, we are excited to see the rapid growth and development of this software start-up and look forward to helping Skyo succeed.
Follow Skyo and Pontem Analytics on LinkedIn to follow this journey!
Direct inquiries can be sent to:
Mike Putrino, Skyo Digital - Managing Director: michael.putrino@skyodigital.com
Conor Sherrard, Pontem Analytics - APAC Regional Manager: conor.sherrard@pontemanalytics.com