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CASE STUDY | MINING | MODERN WORKPLACE

National Iron Ore Mine Leverages hiDocs and Sharepoint to Streamline Processes
and Reduce Risk.

Solution overview

Industry

Mining

Solution

Digital Document Management Solution

Technology

hiDocs and Microsoft SharePoint

Client

The client is a national iron ore mine that supplies high-quality iron ore to the steel industry, globally.

Location

South Africa

Requirement

The client underwent extensive expansion over the years and found that its existing back-end system was no longer sufficient, with persistent errors occuring on their old system.

The implementation of hiDocs and migration to Microsoft SharePoint enabled a well-known iron ore mine to streamline processes and improve efficiencies. The client appointed Decision Inc. to assist with its document management process and implementation of hiDocs and Microsoft SharePoint to replace its aging solution. The implementation was performed to help the organisation meet GRC audit demands related to document management for health, safety, and compliance, and ensure a sustainable solution for the future.

The Client

The client, a national iron ore mine, produces approximately 14 million tons of export quality iron ore per year.

The mine has been in operation since 1867 and operates from mainly two plants. They are part of a parent company that produces both manganese and iron ore. After an expansion project, the mine’s main pant boasts with the capacity to produce 14 million tons of iron ore per annum.

mining

The Requirement

The existing document management system at the mine was no longer sufficient due to the extensive expansion of the mine in recent years.

Technology is ever evolving and due to this, the client started experiencing errors on the old system due to several compatibility issues. Employees were in crisis mode virtually all the time. For example, versioning control on the more than 2,500 documents stored on the system became impractical.

The client required the functionalities that Microsoft SharePoint and hiDocs would bring and needed a system to link across the organisation.

Hypothetical project lead

 

Integration with our existing processes would be essential and change management needed to be done effectively for staff to become comfortable with a different way of doing things.

– Superintendent, Quality, and HDR Compliance Officer

Following a tender process, they identified Decision Inc. as the organisation with the right value proposition and level of support to guide them through the migration process.

The Solution

The Iron Ore mine embarked on a phased approach with Decision Inc. to migrate its exiting documents to the latest version of SharePoint. Despite the level of intricacy, the process went smoothly. In addition to the migration, Decision Inc. installed and configured hiDocs, its Document Management solution built specifically for the mines.

team engineer architects working meeting discussing designing planning measuring layout building blueprints construction site top view construction concept

Decision Inc. identified errors quickly which could be corrected immediately during the migration. SharePoint would provide the client with the platform for continued growth they required in a more digitally rich environment.

Furthermore. the client has been very happy with the level of support provided by Decision Inc. throughout the process especially on the change management side.

Hypothetical project lead

Employees never like changing systems, especially to one as different to what they were used to like SharePoint. However, Decision Inc. assisted us to really highlight the product and how it would benefit not only the organisation but the daily tasks of our staff.

– Superintendent, Quality, and HDR Compliance Officer

The flagship aspect of this migration was incorporating the hiDocs solution into this implementation.

The turn-key solution was implemented on top of the SharePoint platform and caters for the lifecycle management of critical mining documents such as policies and procedures.

hiDocs, geared specifically towards the mining industry, has been developed specifically to meet the digital needs of mines in today’s day and age. It enables mines to effectively manage the compliance of all documents needed for regulatory compliance.

The Benefits and value realised

The implementation of hiDocs and SharePoint migration realised the following befits:

EASY CREATION OF DOCUMENTS

The company now has a digital solution, where documents can easily be created from scratch or by specific document templates, saving a lot of time.

SEAMLESS REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DOCUMENTS

The solution provides workflow and task management
to facilitate and automate each document’s lifecycle management. 

MANAGEMENT OF USER ACCESS 

Role based access allows for the management and access to sensitive information through the roles and permissions of SharePoint.

LOCATE DOCUMENTS EASILY

The solution also uses the SharePoint taxonomy and metadata tagging capabilities to enable users to find documents easier without the need to search through a physical folder structure.

Hypothetical project lead

Not only was the support from Decision Inc. great, but their overall communication with us was excellent. We are now able to run our systems more efficiently and streamline a lot of our processes. Time to response is faster and there is less risk of manual errors.

– Superintendent, Quality, and HDR Compliance Officer

To find out more about our hiDocs solution view here.

About Decision Inc.

Decision Inc. is a global leader in information-driven transformation with a core focus on data, digital and performance intelligence.

Our expertise in technology and industry specialisations have enabled us to help companies around the world make better decisions faster.

Our emphasis on local excellence and global scale enables us to bring clients best of breed technology solutions that enable significant improvement whilst leveraging our Global Research and Innovation teams to accelerate the time to insight. Our local consulting teams are experts in the implementation, support, and execution of these solutions and work with our clients to deliver real results and improvement.

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