The mining industry has undergone a significant transformation in the last few years. Not only have we seen major consolidation activities across the board, but we have also seen the rise of new players like China, which increases competition significantly. In addition to this, the industry was severely impacted by the 2008/9 financial downturn. Commodity prices and economic growth have given way to slowdown and recession; the need to conserve cash and contain costs has never been greater. The industry is faced with challenges including:

• An increased focus on safety, with accidents and non-compliance to regulations leading to temporary mine closure
• Pressure to reduce energy consumption and pollution caused by emissions generated during the production process
• A focus on cost containment and production cutbacks as a means of survival
• Fluctuating commodity prices influenced by currency and customer demands.

Mining companies have to balance short-term responses with long-term strategy, weighing the lengthy timeframes required for major infrastructure projects, such as new mine development against sharp downturns in prices and demand.

As a business leader, the primary expectation is that your technology service provider operates as a partner with best intentions at heart; a partner that will ensure that you remain at the forefront of your field by enabling you to focus on your core business while taking care of your business enablers.

Gijima is the perfect partner is this regard since it subscribes to the mining sector’s core business drivers and can help you to:

Reduce costs by optimising your IT infrastructure

Instead of worrying about the cost of attracting, training and retaining IT staff to manage and support your IT environment, you can achieve cost improvement goals with Gijima’s outsourcing models and managed infrastructure service offerings. We can help you optimise your IT infrastructure, therein maximising both the financial and operational returns on your current investments.

Through consolidation, virtualisation and co-location, your business saves on its direct costs and indirect costs, including a reduction in your energy consumption. By providing your business with remote support, we can manage and resolve faults without the need for technicians to visit your site. This not only reduces the resolution time, but also eliminates the cost of travel.

We offer ad-hoc and varying infrastructure services on a usage-based pricing model Software as a Service (SAAS), giving you total control of your operations expenses. Our outsourcing or co-sourcing solutions enable you to decrease costs through long-term strategic collaboration. Our long-term relationships within the outsourced environments have enabled us to achieve a client retention rate of more than 95%.

Our eleven year track record in the mining industry has helped our clients achieve cost reduction and operational improvement through long-term strategic collaboration and by managing their changing business environment.

Optimise the value of your business support processes

With our tried and trusted systems integration methodologies and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for business, you will be able to optimise your operations through:

• A centralised and integrated supply chain management (SCM) system that combines purchasing through strategic sourcing, therein increasing your asset optimisation and procurement spend
• Ease of access to technical information through electronic document management solutions, which enable your mining engineers to be more responsive and efficient.

Our extensive skills base, including high quality experienced SAP Consultants and qualified geologists, boasts high-level mining sector expertise relating to maintenance, production and engineering. These engineers will help you successfully integrate people, processes and technology in order to optimise overall mine performance.

Manage and minimise your safety and environmental risk

The increasing focus on enterprise-wide risk management and corporate governance demands a fresh and integrated approach to management processes from operational safety to corporate health and wellness.

Gijima’s G-Risk solution will enable you to manage a variety of lead and lag indicators for improved risk performance. More than just operational safety, the solution may be configured to cover all aspects of risk management and includes specific functionality to manage:

• Mine and other operational site ventilation
• Safety, health, environment and quality  
• Compliance with environmental standards.

By being able to provide your business with industry compliance systems and disaster recovery solutions, you are assured of working with a technology partner that understands the risks associated with safe working environments and environmental legislation in the manufacturing industry.

Our knowledge management solutions will ensure that your operation retains and shares its intellectual property securely within the business, safe from unauthorised users.

Our unique reporting solution and management tool for sustainable development – specifically energy, water and greenhouse gasses – will help support your ongoing objectives. This solution delivers an effective reporting and management solution that supports the objective of a common view within and across your entire business.

A real-time executive operational information solution

In today’s global business environment, managers on the move don’t always have core business information readily available to them. Gijima has a clear understanding of these needs and addresses this through a dashboard that is aligned with executives’ daily operational information requirements.

By utilising the latest location aware and spatial applications, you can access seemingly disparate information from within your organisation in order to meet your requirements. Spatial intelligence is the visualisation of spatially referenced data that provides decision-makers with a multi-disciplinary view of their business. By using Gijima’s spatial dash solution, your business decision makers will be able to visually interpret data relationships and patterns of cause-and-effect, therein improving the quality of your decisions and performance of your business as a whole.

Why Gijima?

Gijima is a trusted partner and industry leader in the IT sector, offering a broad selection of IT solutions to the mining industry.

With a market share of more than 90% in South Africa and placed 4th in global ranking in IT Technical Solutions for Mining, we are well positioned to provide superior solutions and service to you.

Our 11 years experience in the mining sector, complemented by our business and technical expertise as well as extensive experience in Applications support, including SAP ERP support; Mining Technical Solutions, Systems Integration, Hosted Infrastructure Services and Human Capital Management renders us the perfect preferred supplier for your business and IT requirements.

Our high quality consultants’ understanding of this industry enables them to make significant contributions to our clients’ business in the sense of value-added work resulting in cost savings amongst other business indicators.

We are privileged to have a selection of blue-chip local and multi-national clients with which we collaborate by providing thought leadership and guidance to optimise their business drivers and unlock their human capital potential.

For further information or a demonstration of our services and solutions, please contact our Mining Industry Sales department on 012 675 5000 or e-mail info.za@minerpsolutions.com