Imagine a reservoir in which water-flooding is used as an EOR method. In order to evaluate water-flood performance, the traditional industry practice is to gather rock and fluid data and simulate the operation using software like Schlumberger Eclipse. This traditional way of reservoir performance evaluation is very expensive and time consuming and not necessarily accurate. But there is an alternative and it is to use CRM. 

CRM relies upon signal analysis techniques and in this method we look at the injection rates and BHP data as our input signal and the production rates as our output signal, and the reservoir as a system, is characterized by the specific response it gives to our specific input. In other words, in using CRM we don’t intend to know “what is in the reservoir”, we are only interested in “how the reservoir behaves”.

So in using CRM we don’t need to know about reservoir rock and fluid properties and we only use the injection and production rates and BHP data which is very cheaply and abundantly available. By using this type of already available data we can save considerable amount of time and money.