Harmony, the largest gold producer in SA and the sixth largest in the world, has implemented a data warehousing solution in a R3.5 million deal with Sybase South Africa aimed at providing the mining company with a single, integrated version of the data on which business decisions are made.
With annual production in excess of 3.6 million ounces of gold, Harmony is the only South African gold mining company with its own dedicated refinery and gold fabrication plants.
"As a gold mining company, our revenue is fixed, so the only means we have of saving money is to reduce our operating costs," says Carlo Gunter, business intelligence manager, Harmony.
"The only way we can accomplish that is to ensure that we have one version of our business information throughout the company. The data warehousing solution has ensured that no matter where you are in the organisation, the answers you receive to your queries will always be the same."
Harmony's previous Microsoft Excel system provided multiple views of the same information across the organisation, often resulting in disparate answers to identical queries posed by different users, and in human error constantly creeping into the system. The company also faced severe time constraints as a result of the system, with certain reports taking up to two weeks to generate.
"All our reporting was historical when we needed to be proactive," says Gunter. "We needed speedier, real-time reporting capabilities to enable management to make decisions based on complete, relevant and accurate data. We wanted our data to be specifically structured for querying and reporting, to make it easier to query and report data from multiple transaction processing systems and data sources on a regular basis.
"Sybase has developed and implemented a system that provides us with tightly integrated, up-to-the-minute information that is now owned by the business users themselves, rather than by IT."
Gunter says Harmony had several requirements: the data warehousing solution had to be rolled out quickly and aggressively; skills had to be transferred to Harmony's own people; and because the company wanted low total cost of ownership, the system had to be self-maintaining.
"All our requirements have been met," he says. "Within six months, Sybase ensured our staff were completely familiar with the system. We now have one employee who is responsible for the development and maintenance."
The data warehousing solution, which was rolled out from Harmony's office in Randfontein to 135 users, comprises enterprise modelling tool Sybase PowerDesigner, and data integration tool Ascential DataStage, and was built on Sybase's IQ relational database. Harmony chose Business Objects as the Web-based reporting interface for the system, which is running on a Sun Solaris platform.
PowerDesigner combines several standard modelling techniques and is particularly suited to enterprise-wide data modelling.
Estelle de Beer, BI practice manager at Sybase SA, says the system was built on IQ because the database is designed specifically for reporting, data warehousing and analytics. "IQ is renowned for its query performance and storage efficiency for both structured and unstructured data. It offers speed and agility with low cost of ownership, and has enabled Harmony to perform analysis and reporting that would previously have been either impossible or simply impractical."
DataStage was selected because of its ability to tightly integrate enterprise information regardless of the sources, targets and timeframes.
Julian Field, MD of Centerfield Software, which distributes Ascential products in SA, says DataStage has brought significant value to Harmony. "The product ensures that all data from any source is presented in a uniform and standard format, irrespective of source, to the target data warehouse. It guarantees all business decisions are based on consistent and accurate data. Another major plus is that DataStage processes source data at great speed, thereby freeing up production systems and the data warehouse as fast as possible. It also accommodates unlimited data volume growth and will embrace any change in the business."
The data warehouse has been implemented in three phases. Phase one kicked off in September 2003, and was completed by January 2004. Sybase's team was on site for the entire phase one roll-out. Phase two ran from March to September 2004. At this stage, Sybase began the skills transfer process with the team coming on site only twice a week. The third and final phase began in January 2005 and will be completed by June this year, when all the company's systems including finance, supply chain, human resources, payroll and production will be incorporated into the system. This phase is being completed almost entirely by Harmony's own team, with occasional support provided by Sybase. Harmony will look at expanding the system into its overseas operations in the near future.
On completion, the system will initially be made available to 500 users, with the eventual target being 15 000 employees out of a total of 56 000. Gunter says the system has a broad range of users for which it has to cater.
"Over 70% of our miners are illiterate, but we want them to have access to documents that show them where we are running over or under budget so that they can understand how the company works. The reports they require are therefore highly graphic. At the same time, we also require management reports for high-end users and our board of directors, whose requirements are entirely different."
Gunter notes that the system also aims to save money for the company, enabling it to make better decisions as a result of better information.
"Before people used to argue about whose information was correct instead of resolving the business issue at hand. Now reports are easily and freely available to those with access to the system. This has major consequences in areas such as our consumables reporting, for example. Our consumables account is around R4 billion per year, so a 10% saving on that as a result of better reporting and analysis is huge for the company.
"Where month-end reports were only available on a monthly basis, we can now review business operations on a weekly basis. Where labour reports are concerned, we now have the ability to remove ghost employees from our systems, as well as to closely monitor the performance of our employees."
Harmony initially approached six vendors to investigate their data warehousing capabilities. This number was narrowed down to three vendors who were requested to deliver a proof of concept (PoC). Sybase was the only one who completed the PoC successfully and within the given timeframe.
"We were also impressed with the methodology behind Sybase's approach," says Gunter. "We have developed an excellent working relationship with the Sybase team, and we are particularly impressed with the way they skilled up our own people, who are now fully capable of running the data warehouse. From that point of view Sybase has added real value to our business. Another important factor is that we know we can count on Sybase to respond immediately if we have any queries or problems, and to provide us with resources when necessary. That's rare for a vendor."
"This was our second big mining deployment, so we had already become quite familiar with the specific requirements of this industry," says Sybase's De Beer. "Mining companies have different financial and production cycles, and you have to deal with the fact that many mining sector employees are generally not computer-literate, so there was a huge mistrust factor to overcome. Also, we came in and took away people's access to their own systems and replaced this with a whole new way of looking at information. We had to convince them that this was the right way forward for the company and for themselves as users.
"I think we can attribute the success of the project to the passion of the people involved and their commitment to make a success of it by meeting all the client's needs on time."
"It's vital for people to start seeing the benefits of a system within the timeframe promised," says Gunter. "It is best to keep to realistic deadlines and to under-promise and over-perform. Most importantly, put as much time as possible into your initial design - if this is in place, it becomes so much easier to develop and deploy your system successfully."
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