RPMGlobal is celebrating the longevity of one of the mining industry’s most trusted financial budgeting tools, XERAS, which turns 30 this month.

XERAS was first introduced to the mining industry in 1990 in an English desktop format, and within a year or two, had half a dozen users, according to RPM.

RPMGlobal has transformed the XERAS desktop product into a corporate enterprise solution, XERAS Enterprise, which, it says, is regarded as the budgeting solution of choice for many of the world’s top tier mining companies around the globe.

Now operating off a server-orientated database, XERAS Enterprise provides standardised, integrated budgets within a single environment, which enables users across all levels of the organisation to make informed financial decisions.

XERAS Enterprise’s zero-based budgeting approach delivers true cost control, transparency and financial agility to the budgeting and forecasting process.

Reflecting on 30 years of continuous product investment, RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, attributed the software’s success to constantly listening, and acting upon, customer’s evolving needs and challenges.

“The uptake of XERAS Enterprise over the years is a testament to the company’s commitment to fostering collaborative partnerships with our customers that places their needs at the front and centre of our product innovation strategy,” he said.

According Mr Mathews, staying on top of evolving market trends is critical to remaining at the forefront of change.

“At RPMGlobal, we are focused on keeping pace with the trends that are shaping the industry, like remote and cloud computing are currently,” he said.

“When XERAS was first created, for example, most mining operations were run as individual businesses. But that has changed over time.

“As organisations have assimilated into larger, multi-site operations, the focus has turned to consistent corporate level solutions and XERAS Enterprise is a key offering in our integrated enterprise suite of products.”

RPMGlobal’s innovative capabilities and ingrained knowledge of the end-to-end mining value chain have helped underpin the continuous improvement process that has led to the re-architecture of XERAS Enterprise throughout its 30-year evolution, it said.

For example, XERAS Enterprise can be integrated into any Enterprise Resource Planning system to deliver a live, zero-based forecasting environment, the company says. This significantly reduces the time it takes to generate budgets and forecasts, delivering companies an accurate financial position at any given time.

Last year marked one of the biggest re-architectural advances for the XERAS products in years with the introduction of XERAS Enterprise 3.0. This release included an updated user experience, improved database technology and enhanced enterprise capabilities.

Mathews said the company remained proud of the continued modernisation of the financial modelling software, which has helped ensure its longevity in the market.

“XERAS Enterprise is a true 21st century software offering that provides trust in the numbers by standardising processes and removing manual data entry, while also allowing for agility and scalability that isn’t available in any other system,” he said.

“Future step-changes in the offering will continue to be driven by customer engagement which involves understanding the client’s usage and requirements and finding solutions that can best fulfil those needs.”