Business Connexion’s industry executive for mining, Pierre Lund-berg, says there is a growing desire among mining companies for a more ‘holistic’ view of the business, and a growing realisation that IT can facilitate such visibility.

The desire, he argues, is still under- pinned by commercial imperatives, but it is also becoming important, given the ever-increasing legislative- and regulatory-compliance pressures, as well as the renewed health-and-safety focus at South African mines.

He admits, though, that the outsourced offering being proposed involves a steep learning curve for IT practitioners, as well as a mind shift for mining companies themselves. “Traditionally, some information is stored in the enterprise resource planning system, which is controlled by the financial director and the IT department, while the rest is stored in various other systems, which are managed by the engineers, geo-logists, surveyors and the laboratory. To obtain a composite view of this information, the various sets of information need to be brought together under the umbrella of information management,” says Lundberg.

To integrate the commercial and the production systems, the company is proposing that all systems, outsourced and in-house, be managed within the IT domain, and be placed under the direction of the company’s chief information officer. Such a move would, Lundberg argues, ensure alignment of business and operational drivers.

“For instance, the impact of the mission-critical process-control network going down is far greater than the email server malfunctioning because it can negatively impact an entire production line, which could have significant financial and shareholder implications,” he explains.

Business Connexion already has major mining clients in South Africa, and Lundberg says it is working hard to develop a model that allows for an IT overlay over the full mining enterprise.

He admits that IT disciplines will have to be adjusted to cater for the complexity of the resources environ- ment, which embraces complex elements, such as security, remote monitoring, and mechanical and chemical processes.

“We believe we are building the infrastructure, capacity and skills to enable us to take over the outsourcing of complex process environments, such as mining, and I am convinced that, with the introduction of appropriate business intelligence tools, mining executives will have a far more holistic view of their organisations,” concludes Lundberg.