Continue reading of some examples where Astral has provided value to Mining organisations, through Enterprise Information Management solutions by clicking on the links below.

Links

• Astral Use Case – EIM Value – Mining Sector – Astral
• Value Case 1: Global Oil & Gas Exploration Organisation – Astral
• Value Case 3: Global Mining Services Organisation – Astral
• Value Case 4: Global Mining Organisation – Astral

Introduction

With mining operations across multiple continents, this Astral client managed their unstructured information across multiple systems and were seeking an integrated solution for the management of engineering data and drawings and other critical business information that could be leveraged across the organisation, whilst reducing the associated risk profile.

With a large focus on intelligent engineering data management, Astral were engaged to prepare an Information Management Strategy and Roadmap to define the future direction for the management and governance of information balancing the business needs, operational risk, IT Strategy and the regulatory environment. This included defining the options for IM solution, based on the business requirements and a solution options assessment.

The Business Challenges

The following business challenges were identified:

• Handover and synchronisation limitations with operational documents/drawings result in conflicting sources of truth.
• Copies of documents are made and stored separately resulting in out of sync data between multiple mediums.​
• SAP uses 3 different methods to store unstructured information related to a transaction.
• Multiple ways of managing controlled documents across different areas of the organisation, Corporate and Operational sites.
• Legal matter management – associated information and emails may be stored across multiple systems making it difficult to have a single view of all the information and to share information both internally and externally.
• A number of business systems are in custom developed SharePoint solutions which required rewriting.
• Cognitive search needed to be moved to the Microsoft platform to include SharePoint.
• A critical need to facilitate the centralised management of Safety Data and Documents for linking and consumption across multiple systems (Permit to Work, Work Order Management, etc.)

The Business Solution

Astral undertook an information discovery phase, including a series of workshops with business representatives to discuss the current approach to managing information for all unstructured information.  With an emphasis on Capital Projects, Engineering Data & Drawings, Controlled Documents, SAP Hosted Documents, Uncontrolled Documents and Cognitive Search. Technical architecture workshops were also conducted with the lead architects to understand the current IT landscape, the IT Strategy, and future directions from a technology perspective.

Astral then undertook an assessment of the current solutions being used across the organisation, a market scan and assessment of what other tools are available globally.  Providing the assessment for a number of future state options including: retain current state, a data centric option, a content centric option, a consolidated asset lifecycle option.

A breakdown of each option was worked through with the customer using the context of the Business Strategy, the IT Strategy and the client’s Risk and Compliance obligations to come up a final recommended solution. Go to market options were also provided to make final selection of a solution set that would best meet the business requirements end to end.

The Information Management Roadmap was then delivered to facilitate consensus on the implementation approach for the outcome of the IM Strategy, facilitate budgeting and investment decisions, and identify an efficient execution to maximise ROI.

The Business Benefits

The roadmap identified all streams of work required, software licenses and implementation services for all key initiatives to enable improved Information Management identified in the IM Strategy. The costs associated for the software and implementation services (external) were also included, enabling the business to secure budgets for the next 3 years.