Mincom, a provider of software and services, has released findings from the first in a series of research studies designed to gauge perceptions of key stakeholders in the mining industry, The Mincom Annual Study: Mining Executive Insights. The highest-ranked priority amongst those surveyed is ensuring workplace safety, with improving performance and operational effectiveness a close second. The study, initially focused on the North American market, polled more than 100 leading mining companies to reveal what high-level executives consider to be the most pressing business challenges facing their enterprises today, and how they intend to protect profits and drive growth in the current economy.
The study’s respondents – 88% of whom are Vice Presidents and CEOs, or head operations or finance – were asked to identify their current challenges by level of urgency, yielding these responses:
• Ensuring workplace safety (71%)
• Improving performance and operational effectiveness (67%)
• Managing capital projects (46%)
• Recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce (38%)
• Addressing environmental concerns (37%).
“Not surprisingly, safety remains the highest priority for leaders in the global mining community. It’s a complex topic, but two mission-critical areas companies must address to ensure a safe work environment are reliable assets and high-quality work practices,” said Jennifer Tejada, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive VP, Mincom. “Mincom believes these research findings underscore the need for solutions that are field driven, crossing the chasm between actual physical asset conditions in the field, often in remote locations, and improving the service chain of those assets, through to accurately costing and reporting on the entire asset lifecycle. We remain committed to a customer-driven approach that has guided the development of our solutions for 30 years.”
Respondents were also asked to identify their biggest obstacles to organic company growth, leading to the following results by industry sector:
• Across all mining companies, the top obstacle to organic growth is “complying with government regulations”
• Among coal mining companies in particular, “decline in market demand” was the biggest hindrance
• And for gold and copper mining companies, “delays in getting new mines operational” topped the list.
The new research also discloses a significant detachment between many companies’ top business objectives, and the processes and technologies required to support them.
The survey, conducted in January 2010, revealed that 87% of respondents named “pursuing an aggressive cost-control strategy” as their top method for maintaining profitability in the current economy. Yet 57% of these executives say they lack systems that demonstrate the correlation of operational metrics and financial results, making it difficult to quantifiably establish which controls are the most effective.
Similarly, a full 79% of executives said they intend to better integrate their financial planning with all departments and control systems, with 73% saying their organisations are building an accurate operational model that links predictive production costs to operations and finance. But only 26% say they possess an integrated software system to compile production information across multiple mines and processing facilities for group reporting.
“Among our key findings is the continued prevalence of time-consuming and error-prone manual roll-ups and reconciliations being performed across mining facilities in an attempt to achieve enterprise-level views of performance and costs,” said Tejada. “This is just one area where information technology can deliver enormous benefits – in this case, unified software solutions optimised for mining and designed to power accurate, timely enterprise views. When you look at the top business challenges identified by the executives we surveyed, they abound with opportunities for more modern technology infrastructure to make a major impact.”
The study was completed in January 2010 and Mincom intends to perform this survey annually in key regions around the world to track the top challenges in mining, and to gauge how mining organisations successfully address them. For a full summary of results and analysis, please visit: www.mincom.com/en/resources/type/whitepapers/WP-MiningExecInsights2010.aspx