Over the next five years, we expect to see a rise in mineral exploration activity as economic conditions stabilise following the COVID-19 pandemic. The growing demand for mineral exploration will continue as existing deposits become depleted. However, exploration expenditures by major mining companies and junior miners won’t return to the peak levels experienced during Australia’s mining boom. Instead, exploration activity is set to increase gradually, with companies prioritising production at existing mine sites while greenfield exploration captures the interest of many investors.
Exploration Mining
Exploration miners, particularly junior miners, often face challenges in managing exploration costs due to reliance on unintegrated software systems. These systems typically involve manual data entry and react to the company’s needs, primarily as tools for capturing past data rather than providing real-time insights. This limited perspective can lead to budget overruns and decreased operational efficiency, putting them in a tough spot during exploration.
Many exploration miners hesitate to adopt an ERP system, viewing the setup costs as daunting, especially for potentially unproductive mines. This is where Pronto Xi steps in. Pronto Xi delivers an affordable and scalable solution that adapts to a mine’s lifecycle, helping to monitor costs and enhance returns on investment. With Pronto Xi, all company data resides in one location. You can separate different sites into individual datasets, allowing you to monitor the performance of each mine at any time.
From 2015 to 2020, 25 of the 38 new implementations completed by Scope Systems were for Exploration companies.
Exploration and Pronto Xi ERP
High project costs during exploration means that having an affordable exploration specific ERP system during the exploration stage (and beyond), is invaluable for your company.
Pronto Xi is suited to exploration mining, offering a way for you to establish standardised business processes in a quick and efficient way. This solution allows you to access to industry-specific ERP functionality through a cost-effective software-as-a-service (Saas) model, reducing your software capital expenditure.
Investing in an industry-specific ERP system allows you to:
- Eliminate all manual intervention between your financial system, business intelligence reporting and bespoke spreadsheet applications. Associated costs and delays in the reworking of data integrity problems and accurate representation into the company dashboards.
- Improve project costing reporting and determination of real costs and profits of jobs.
- Automate purchasing processes for tighter control of costs associated with projects.
- Accurately represent assets-related projects to allow for improved visibility of costs on short-term one-off projects.
- Minimise/Reduce the total administrative workload required to manage current operations through efficient data entry, systems and document controls.
With enhanced monitoring and deeper insights into your project costs, project managers can prevent cost overruns or project delays during high-value feasibility studies, EPCM, construction, development, and operational phases. This ensures operations commence on time and within budget.
Scope Systems Customised Solutions
With over 30 years of experience in implementing ERP solutions in the mining industry, Scope Systems has developed additional solutions specific to the needs of exploration miners. These solutions and customisations work seamlessly alongside Pronto Xi. Our exploration modules are perfect for junior miners seeking a lower-costing, exploration-specific system. By choosing an integrated system over manual data entry software such as Excel, you have the ability to track all standard accounting functionality. the added benefit of also tracking all non-financial drilling and physical data to accurately track the budget and actuals of projects and leases.
By investing in an ERP system during the exploration stage of your project, you will have greater visibility and control of your mining costs, allowing you to make more informed decisions. The scalable nature of Pronto Xi coupled with its industry-specific exploration module and Scope Systems own customisations makes it the only piece of software you will need to have an efficient and transparent operation.
If you have any questions or want to discuss further how Scope Systems can work with you during the exploration stage or any stage of your mine’s lifecycle, please get in touch with us.
