Mining is a high risk, high reward venture. Only with the most cutting edge asset management software
can you minimise the risks while maximising the rewards.
West Africa’s mining industry has never been riper for
investment. Burkina Faso and Ghana are among the top five mineral exporters in
Africa while a revival in rail construction has led to a significant number of
mines opening in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Despite this, many multinationals are conservative in their
regional investments. Many of the nations that make up West Africa, such as
Gabon and Guinea, are still seen as having high risk profiles, thereby leading
to investors sticking to iron ore mining in ostensibly safer countries such as
South Africa and Australia.
The extraction industries are simply too capital intensive
to engage in much risk-taking. This is about to change thanks to the strides in
management technologies. Mobility, the cloud, and data analytics are just some
of the recent developments that have propelled enterprise management to new
heights.
While many mining companies do employ some forms of
low-level management software, these do not provide the end-to-end visibility
that large-scale mining in remote areas of Africa demands. Full data
integration is the foundation for a streamlined organisation that makes the
most out of its assets and squeezes the most revenue out of its commodities.
A single intelligence platform allows for end-to-end access
and control over all of the disparate functions of a mining company –
financials, geological information management, production, enterprise asset
management, and human resources.
By allowing for synchronisation of all of these processes,
ERP software gives mining companies tighter control over and insight into
business risks and procedures, from procurement to maintenance to sales. By
facilitating collaboration between production, maintenance and repairs, ERP
drives both downstream and upstream efficiencies.
Thanks to the amount of important available through Big
Data, companies can easily manoeuvre around the many operational risks inherent
in mining. Data analytics allow for accurate, up-to-the-minute insights on the
status of commodities and assets, while the adaptability of ERM lets businesses
to respond to unexpected incidents almost as soon as they happen.
With ERP, companies can optimise the life cycles of their
equipment through smart management of procurement, maintenance, transportation
and operations, leading to better safety standards and lowered overheads. That
same ease of management extends to auditing and compliance, so mining companies
can be assured that they are always operating at maximum capacity with minimum
risk.
Those companies who are looking to step into the waters of
the West African mining wave should consider how well-positioned they are to
deal with the operational risks they will inevitably have to deal with. SAP’s
mining industry-specific ERP portfolio contains the software they need to utilise
their assets effectively and mitigate both industry and regional risks.
