The Challenge
An adequate analytics strategy is just that, perfectly adequate. It hits exactly the points it needs to and serves the needs of the organisation in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of current business plans, strategy and core processes.
In this situation, we were engaged by MMG, an ASX-listed mining company, to assess and provide input on their current strategy to improve the operational reporting and analytics capability at all level of the organisation.
Our Solution
The performance intelligence strategy lacked an understanding of what was required at site level. As each site is an individual entity, and at a different level of the mining lifecycle – from exploration to reclamation – this posed a challenge when rolling out a common way of working.
Central to this organisation was the inclusion of an operational excellence group who were tasked with investigating areas for improvement to tasks and investments across multiple sites and assets.
Ignite’s goal was to introduce capabilities that integrated the varied needs of corporate, the operational excellence group down to individual site level, while leveraging significant current investment.
We aimed to:
- Improve the collation and presentation of operational metrics that hindered time-sensitive business decisions and tactical business opportunities.
- Improve the ability to perform continuous improvement analysis across operations level data and functions.
- Provide the capability to perform commercially driven analytics to improve existing operations or promote new ways of operating.
- Introduce capabilities that exploit non-traditional data sources and analysis techniques to position the organisation as a “Next Generation” mining company.
We approached this engagement by detailing the objectives and scope of the project into sections that would cohesively fit together.
The overall objective was to achieve the aforementioned goals though a strategic direction for operational reporting and analytics by:
- Providing a blueprint and framework to enable an effective operational reporting and analytics capability to take advantage of the information opportunity currently available.
- Focusing on actual business and value – to serve as a reference point to guide future investment in capabilities and technologies whilst ensuring alignment with wider business objectives and requirements.
- The provision of an indicative roadmap to establish and build operational reporting and analytics capability, with a focus on what is important to each site considering its lifecycle stage.
- Providing an operational model that allowed for balance between corporate, operational excellence and site level decisions.
- An ability to adopt plug-and-play mining specific analytical apps.
Identify the potential value in data and create a pathway to realising it.
Using Ignite’s methodology in a time defined scope, our Analytics Pathway delivers:
- Prioritised business analytics pipeline
- Insight into the unique needs of internal and external personas
- Grouped data and analytics requirements
- Defined data and solution architecture
- Optimised Prototype-to-Production operating model
- Executable workplan
- Comprehensive business case
Results
Our final deliverables took the form of:
- Defining what is meant by Performance Intelligence at Corporate vs Operational Site level and how this will integrate for a holistic view.
- A clearly defined vision, objectives and maturity at site level to take into account the mining lifecycle of each site.
- Operational Report and Analytics capability framework.
- Technology options based on leverage first before investing further (covering SAP, OSISoft and Microsoft capabilities).
- Operate Model covering governance and skills gaps.
Where to next?
The engagement was able to clearly understand and articulate the varying yet overlapping needs of various stakeholders. Ensuring that investment and adoption accountabilities were taken into account. Our multi-skilled strategy consultants were able to set a direction that achieved the necessary business goals by predominately leveraging investment in a multi technology stack. The recommendations were endorsed with pilot roll outs of site level capabilities
