End-to-End Business Operations System for Mining

future of business intelligence in mining

Many Australia mining companies have evolved through exploration discoveries, purchase of brownfield operations, rebirth of old operations and the takeovers of ailing operations whose fortunes have fluctuated with the ebbs and flows of their commodity prices. A consequence of this is that for these companies, data gathering technologies have not evolved with the business, and in most case are limited to spreadsheets and stand-alone software packages that require many hours of manual manipulation of information to produce meaningful reports. Coupled with poor control and storage of historical data and it a far from ideal solution for tracking their mining operations.

Most mining businesses have good financial accounting or ERP software in place, due in large part to the universal common structure of finance and accounting. However, when it comes to a mining business’s operations, very few are structured the same. The result of this is there are less, or very few, ready-made out of the box mining operations platforms, which in turn means it is something that generally is not done very well in the mining industry.

Whilst technology is certainly evolving in the industry, many of the solutions are specialist point solutions that address specific areas, for example: drilling, plant management, safety, maintenance, milling, and haulage, where modern mining equipment and vehicles are fitted with sensors to provide performance data, to list a few. Each of these ‘systems’ collect data and report on performance in that specific area, and the do it well. However, to get an overall view of the activities and performance of the company operations, ideally data from all these systems needs to be integrated into a single single source.  The problem is these systems do not easily interface with each other, commonly resulting in large amounts of manual handling and manipulation of data for reporting, invoicing, cost control, budgeting, forecasting etc.

It is in these manual processes where the real hidden costs are. Lack of quality data, repetitive data preparation, and timely availability of data which impact productivity and decision making, are all combining to cost mining companies millions of dollars.

Most of these companies have little appetite for totally changing their systems to a complex and expensive all-encompassing system. As well as the cost, the fear of business interruption, data loss, staff disruption and training, and the stress of running parallel systems in the beginning, can be overwhelming. That is if they can first find the right software package that mirrors their business.

This is the problem the End-to-end Business Operations System (EEBOS) aims to address. Developed by bi5 and Pure Integral, two Perth based companies, this systems fits in with existing systems where required, and can even work with existing spreadsheet based reports and data entry, integrating all of this data through the use of AI, to provide a single source of data on which the full end to end operating process can be monitored and analysed.

bi5 and Pure Integral initially worked together at a well-known mining service company, that is now listed on the ASX. It started life as small construction material supplier of sand, gravel, and crushed stone to the mining industry especially in remote locations. To do this work the business had loaders, road trains, graders, water carts, mobile crushing units and other equipment. Pretty simple and basic activities, however the owner and management of the company decided that technology was going to be their competitive advantage and point of difference so invested in technology right from the start. Whilst they still had the specialist point solutions for the different functions, they focused on automating the integration of data into a single source of the truth for reporting and analysis of the operational and financial performance.

All the performance and load data from the vehicles and equipment is automatically collected and integrated with cost data from Pronto ERP and Payroll systems to provide comprehensive and timely reporting, invoicing both internally and to clients.

The benefits of EEBOS for Mining Operations included:

  • Business wide transparency of performance
  • Achieve alignment between strategic, financial and operational goals
  • Increase, planning, budgeting, forecasting and decision making accuracy and speed
  • Automate time consuming and error prone manual tasks
  • Drive accountability over results

The first step in our process is to “look under the bonnet” by reviewing all your data capture points. In many cases these are spreadsheets, stand-alone and SAAS software packages. We then trace and map the information flow, collection, and output points. Most importantly we have one on one discussions with all those involved. By doing this we get a good understanding of the problems that need to be solved and we identify your internal clients and what output they require from the data.

We then design a staged workflow that best fits your business. Each stage is designed to stand alone until integrated into the next stage. This methodology provides minimal disruption to staff and systems and is staged to the comfortable capacity of the business. The business is then able to choose when and if it wants to progress the next stage.

Pure Integral and bi5  have now formed a partnership and combined their industry and technical expertise and experience to provide an optional solution to this dilemma. Through well designed, robust, and automated plugin features, smart data bases and Power BI dashboarding we have developed a solution to address this problem and provide a data integration, reporting and analysis and budgeting and forecasting platform with minimal disruption.


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