Written by Andrew Howell, Director, SAP Business ByDesign at Illumiti
Digital transformation isn’t strictly about technology: it’s about the interaction, intimacy, and caring that only humans can provide. Being able to anticipate, adapt, and future-proof your mining operation to a digitally-enhanced future means preparing your people with the right skill sets. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this clear as day.
But many of us, until now, don’t seem to be gaining from on-the-job experiences. We learn less, succumb to familiarity, and, in a robotic-like fashion, seem to drift on autopilot: companies fail to help their people unlock their full potential, forcing them to miss the boat on chances to learn more. So, as we continue to roam through our current state of affairs and the current pandemic, one thing makes sense: there is no better time to shift gears and reimagine the potential of our people as we position ourselves for a future most of us did not expect, and especially so quickly.
The Power of Putting People First
Technology is essential for streamlining and improving various business operations, but proves ineffective if employees are not entirely leveraging the technology. By retraining an organization’s people, we can better enhance our relationship with technology: innovation is immaterial if they are not enabled to use it. When investing in technology, your operations need to take a people-first approach to make technology advantageous.
The Benefits of Soft Skills
What the future holds will always be a mystery. Continually preparing and developing your people, however, is a sure bet to keep your operations ready for almost anything. At Illumiti, part of our philosophy is to encourage continual development (both hard and soft skills), especially those that pertain to personality skills and communication abilities that prepares our people for long-term success. Technical aptitudes are a must, but would be meaningless without a complement of natural and intellectual curiosity. Every employee must effectively engage with others, so these are skills that cannot be ignored.
Shaping Your Organization’s Change Starts from the Top
The speed and scope of the pandemic has created unexpected challenges for business leaders. Brilliant or poor, their decisions trickle down to influence every aspect of an enterprise. Talent is impossible to duplicate, so investing in leadership will distinguish your enterprise and establish a competitive edge. In fact, science has shown that leadership development programs are both cost effective and beneficial. In fact, meta-analytic research that combined the results of over 335 different leadership development program studies (training, coaching) provides substantial evidence that these programs lead to improved reactions (leaders liked the training), learning (leaders gained knowledge), transfer (leaders used their learnings at work), and, most importantly, results (leaders performed better).
The Right Technology Matters
Digitally transforming your operations establishes a strategic, competitive advantage. And by doing so with technology that enables you to utilize data provides an added edge which is necessary for future success. With your people properly trained to use data—translating into and creating meaningful, actionable insights—your operations will become the data-driven culture it needs to be, especially in challenging times. Data needs to become the heart of your operations.
With SAP Business ByDesign, junior mines can run their entire operations on a data-driven, cloud-based management suite: streamline end-to-end processes, boost efficiencies, and gain greater insights in the business, and cultivate the data needed to run efficiently. And with Illumiti’s IP and templates designed specifically for mines, the cost to a junior mine is much lower than one might expect—it matters more about getting the system up and running quickly, so the benefits can be experienced immediately.
As someone with access to great people and technology, and with experiences as a Director helping to lead, train, and prepare people across my enterprise and those of our clients for a digital future, I am confident, even with all of this uncertainty, that mining operations will effectively adjust to change. By making the right decisions now, mines will be better prepared to equip their people with the right technology. It all starts with people, and the key is to be open to change, especially in times of a crisis.
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