To ensure profitability and future growth, the Australian and New Zealand mining industry must maintain best in class operational performance and disciplined cost control. The mining boom of recent years was dampened by the GFC (Global Financial Crisis). Executives in the mining industry are fully aware of how market demand for their products strongly fluctuates.
In the face of fluctuating demand and cyclical pricing, operating an efficient and streamlined business, as well as squeezing costs, is critical.
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Sage has over twenty years experience in providing ‘best in class’ business software and applications for the mining, engineering and construction industries. Helping organisations to reduce costs and operate at peak performance, Sage software solutions allows you:
- To analyse and manage costs at the shaft, process, sub-process, and equipment levels.
- Better manage and service capital equipment (the more efficient use you gain out of a piece of equipment will lower your costs).
- To capture production and exploration data with configurable time periods and units of measure to produce cost-per-ounce and cost-per-meter reporting.
- Manage all of your financial and accounting requirements.
Key Challenges for the Mining Industry
Financing and managing capital projects
Mining companies have to balance short-term responses with long-term strategy, weighing the long timescales needed for major infrastructure projects, such as mine development, against sharp downturns in prices and demand.
Improving Performance and Cost Efficiency
As a mature industry, mining companies must achieve enhanced profitability, in large part, through best in class performance and disciplined cost control as market demand for their products strongly fluctuates. At any point and time, commodity prices may be high or low, but management teams know that commodity price levels are cyclical. In the face of fluctuating demand and cyclical pricing, operating an efficient and streamlined business, as well as squeezing costs, is critical.
Mining transactions and industry consolidation
High levels of transactions across all segments of the sector involving industry players of all sizes seeking deals all over the world continue to rapidly change the face of the global mining industry.
Managing Risk
Major capital investment decisions are being made in this increasingly volatile operating and price environment, where future returns on the capital invested are increasingly uncertain. Given these attributes of their operating environment, global mining companies are placing increasingly higher priority on the need for effective corporate risk management.
Recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce
The ability to recruit strategically and retain key employees and scarce skills in mining companies is more important now than ever and is imperative to the future of the industry.
Sage ERP X3 allows organisations in the mining industry to meet these challenges by giving them control, speed and flexibility.
Sage ERP X3 — The next step in ERP evolution
Sage ERP X3 is a full-service enterprise management software system for mid-to-large businesses aimed at meeting the most elaborate business processes, while remaining cost-effective, quick to implement and simple to use.
Sage ERP X3 includes a wide range of modules to handle the entire mining cycle, from development to exploration to production and sales. Sage ERP X3 is a highly configurable solution driven by workflow rules and authorisations to ensure accurate data capture and complete control over budgets.
Core Financial Modules
Sage ERP X3 is renowned for its rock-solid financials and reporting. The transactional analysis capability of all modules gives you more in-depth costing information than the general ledger. CFOs can now keep a concise general ledger with up to 10 levels of analysis, including comprehensive information on additional costs to equipment, cost centers, or responsibility centers for dynamic reporting.
Workflow
Sage ERP X3 quickly and efficiently processes simple data entry requests from the mine to the appropriate cost centers or budgets with built-in, comprehensive authorisation capabilities. The workflow and Business Intelligence capabilities of Sage ERP X3 help meet the challenge of financing and managing capital projects.
The complete workflow process drives accurate data capture, improves decision-making, and reduces potential errors through a built-in authorisation trail.
The Workflow solution manages procurement and internal stock issues by allowing for the creation of an unlimited number of workflows and associated rules and alerts. These simple-to-use screens provide CFOs with the correct information analysed appropriately at data entry. As requisitions are made, they are automatically allocated to the appropriate cost centers, shafts, processes, and equipment, based on user profiles, stock structures, or expense codes. This saves time and eliminates the need for reallocations at month end.
Asset Management and Maintenance
Sage ERP X3 appreciates the need for capital budgeting and end-to-end asset management. Investments in assets is a significant part of any mining operation, and Sage ERP X3 offers the appropriate controls over budgeting and procurement while ensuring compliance with IFRS and Sarbanes-Oxley.
Asset management is achieved through a configurable set of modules, from asset depreciation and acquisition to auditing and tracking.
Asset maintenance is a fundamental part of mining operations. Sage ERP X3 tracks the cost of equipment and provides a comprehensive history of all assets, including faults, agreements, warranty claims, return authorisations and a complete audit trail. This makes it easier to predict the asset’s life cycle and financial profitability with full statistical analysis.
By giving you all the information that you need, Sage ERP X3 allows you to reduce costs and minimise the risks associated with major capital investment decisions.
Production and Exploration Data
The production data capture module allows users to set up an area or operation against which costs can be tracked, such as shafts, open pits, or tailings. Beneath this layer of costs lies a lower level of processing such as shaft sinking, development waste or stopping (depending on the environment), which is linked back to the top level. Typically, the plant area will track the processing of material from all areas and link it to a sub-component of the general ledger account for reporting purposes only.
The modules allows users to specify units of measure for the production data captured, such as meters advanced, tons surveyed, tons hoisted and treated, and carats recovered. This is captured as needed — daily, weekly, or monthly — and linked to the business intelligence suite. Sage ERP X3 has been designed to manage surveying and monitoring activities and capture geological site survey information. Information from the mobile devices is integrated throughout the mining suite to give management increased visibility and operational control.
Business Intelligence
Sage ERP X3 for Mining facilitates the creation of reports that combine actual vs. budgeted data with complete drill down to the detail level of production data — information every CFO needs.
The financial and production data is audited and approved, giving the Board of Directors comfort that operations and finance are in synchronisation. The reporting modules allow for in-depth analysis at any level — right down to equipment or shaft information — which helps mining companies like yours make faster, better strategic decisions.