WHY I&A

Mining – Budgeting & Forecasting

Company Overview

The client is one of the gold industry leaders in terms of production, reserves, and market capitalization. The company operates globally, with a portfolio of 26 operating mines and advanced exploration and development projects located across the world.

Oracle Implementation by I&A Perth Australia

Oracle

Hyperion formed the core of an Oracle based solution facilitating full integration with Oracle’s Asset Management Module (eAM) – a module of Oracle’s e Business Suite (eBS). The Hyperion solution was complemented by other Products in the Oracle BI/EPM suite including Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) to provide feeds to and from Hyperion, Smartview the main end user interface for various inputs and some reporting. Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA) was used to maintain Hyperion Application structures. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11g was used to view outputs providing various standard Reports in a suite of Dashboards and Adhoc Reporting capability from both PC and iPad.

Challenges & Business Objectives

  • The implementation of an integrated zero-based Budgeting Solution spanning the core functions of Open Pit and Underground Mining, Processing and Maintenance across all mine sites.
  • These modules must be fully integrated, draw on key sources such as the Mine and Metals Plans at each mine site together with the equipment maintenance plans stored in Barrick’s equipment planning and maintenance system and accept user inputs as required.
  • Users must have the ability to quickly iterate as changes occur to the mine and metal plans and other core assumptions.
  • Prior to the Implementation the models used to build the budgets were largely manually driven, disparate worksheets with no consolidation which provided a great opportunity for inconsistencies between the actual and budget systems and increased the incidence of human error.
  • The current reporting functionality did not adequately compare budgets to actuals or forecasts at the lower asset level for all areas of maintenance. This resulted in low-quality cost management practices.

Solution Benefits

  • Full Integration with eBS & OBIEE.
  • Removal of many manual inputs and data inconsistencies.
  • Ability to quickly iterate through changes in core planning assumptions.
  • Productivity gains were achieved through the introduction of an integrated solution.
  • Ability to consolidate across different mines, regions and the group.
  • Improved Budget vs. Forecast vs. Actual Reporting.
  • The solution is to be rolled out globally to all mine sites.