"AngloGold has cut its report generation times for its South African operations from weeks to days since implementing Bytes Business Solutions` Business Intelligence tool known as Business Objects (BO)," says AngloGold, Manager: Survey and Planning, Jurgens Visser.
Visser said that it was too expensive and costly to maintain the mainframe-based SAS reporting systems and after thorough research of the market decided on BO.
"We decided on BO after an evaluation of all the products on the market and made the final choice based on compatibility, capital outlay, skills levels and ability to report without hindrance from our DB2 database. In all of these requirements, Business Objects and Bytes Business Solutions proved superior," says Visser.
"AngloGold`s use of the Business Objects suite to draw together reports from a wide variety of input sources: mine managers, sections heads, shift team leaders and back up the chain, make it a unique application of BO," says Bytes Business Solutions, Sales Manager, Birgitta Cederstrom.
AngloGold is a global gold producer with 20 operations in eight countries worldwide. In SA it runs seven mines and the enterprise-wide reporting demands are massive with hundreds of thousands of data captures and transactions every year.
The BO product suite consists of an integrated business intelligence (BI) toolset, a BI platform and a suite of analytic applications and is represented, supplied and supported in South Africa by Enterprise software company, Bytes Business Solutions.
Visser adds: "Our system captures and follows transactions from the mine production level up to management and up to 300 reports can be generated at any time.
"When a new report was requested under the old mainframe reporting system, consultants would have to be called in at great expense. These consultants would first have to be briefed as to the requirements of the report and then they would prepare the coding and extraction process. A report would only be drawn on the second or third runs after weeks of delays and thousands of rands in consultancy fees have been spent," said Visser.
One of the main attractions of BO for AngloGold is its ability to empower its users to draw their own reports without outside consultants. Using standardised, self-designed report templates, BO has allowed AngloGold users to instantly customise reports, allowing different accents to be placed upon data demands as per each individual case. In this way the speed of the entire process has been increased while simultaneously producing direct financial benefits, says Visser.
The cost savings are critical in terms of AngloGold`s commitment to become the gold investment vehicle of choice and slots in perfectly with the company`s stated objective of driving the company down the cost curve.
"AngloGold has been able to use BO in its purchasing, selling, analytics and managerial, as well as its administration departments, a truly enterprise wide application of the product," concludes Cederstrom.
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