Greentree underpins Valley Longwall’s growth-by-acquisition strategy
As this Australian mining company taps into the potential of China, Greentree continues to support its forward momentum...
The Valley Longwall International Group provides equipment, support and services to underground coal mines around the world, focusing on gassy coal mines where Australia sets the standard globally for best practice with three distinct areas of expertise: directional drilling, diesel vehicles and conveyor systems.
Valley Longwall has supplied equipment and services to Australia, China and Russia and is exploring opportunities in other markets where underground gassy coal mines are prevalent.
The business situation
Pin-point accurate job costing, the ability to handle complex multi-levelled jobs and improve inventory management have all been achieved.
Valley Longwall wanted a sound business base upon which it could pursue reasonably aggressive growth and that strategy is now in full swing.
The return on the original investment in Greentree is being demonstrated throughout the expanding group of companies.
Group reporting time plummets
Jan Grove, financial controller, says reporting has changed dramatically and Valley Longwall worked closely with its Greentree partner to develop a cost accrual process to make reporting faster and more accurate.
The process enables the automatic capture, analysis, allocation and reporting of costs in conjunction with Excel integration.
Grove is enthusiastic about the results which effectively dropped the amount of time involved by more than half. The company’s board of directors now gets timely, as opposed to historical, group operating performance information.
This is invaluable for strategic planning and decision making.
Month-end close-off drops from 10 working days to 3 working days
Greentree’s integrated environment has shaved an enviable six to seven days off the time between month-end and close-off.
This is because integration has done away with multiple disparate systems and the two to three sets of mostly differing data.
Grove says staff no longer face month-end with trepidation and he’s stunned by the positive impact Greentree has had on staff morale. He’s amazed at how the removal of time pressures has positively impacted upon organisational culture.
This has translated into significant reductions in staff training and other staff related costs with significant productivity improvements.
Set-up of plant jobs optimises asset usage
In an industry where jobs can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, down-time simply isn’t an option.
It’s therefore imperative that plant assets such as drilling rigs are optimally utilised since this has implications for maintenance scheduling and profitability.
Recently, the plant job functionality within the Job Cost module was developed to ensure the accurate allocation, tracking and capture of all costs associated with rig usage.
Grove says this has produced some solid early results and over the longer term will maximise capacity, avoid over-capitalisation and reduce maintenance costs by better enabling of preventative maintenance scheduling.
Omnipresent access
Valley Longwall’s mobile workforce requires system access from anywhere which previously, wasn’t possible since each company within the group was using a different system.
Now, staff can walk into any Valley Longwall company in any country and get instant access to Greentree via the internet. This ensures they can work optimally from anywhere.
Deep business understanding helps achieve goals faster
Grove states that the Greentree partner “made sure they learned our business, knew our people and understood our goals.”
He’s certain that this translated into the best utilisation of available resources and the quickest path to achieving the stated business goals.
“The Greentree partner knows Greentree and our business inside-out so we don’t need to waste time explaining what we’re trying to achieve over and over again, such as setup of the Plants which was done in less than a day.”
Acquisition of complementary mining operations across multiple countries ensures that Valley Longwall is well placed to offer customers the complete end-to-end mining solution.
Greentree helps leverage and coordinate the collective efforts of all companies within the group.
For more information
Graham Hill
1800 000 737
graham.hill@greentree.com
www.greentree.com
8/12/16_ex_h_nl
At a Glance
Valley Longwall International
Industry
Construction – Mining
Location
Sydney, Australia
Greentree Product Suite
Financials, Distribution, Job Costing, Manufacturing, CRM and Workflow.
Business Benefits
- Cost accrual process has reduced group reporting by half the usual time resulting in timely and accurate, rather than historical, reporting to the board of directors.
- Month-end to close-off reduced from 1 ˝ weeks to 2-3 days.
- The cumulative effect of reducing time pressures on staff has positively impacted upon organisational culture resulting in a reduction in staff related costs.
- Greentree’s intuitive environment enables the set-up of other companies within the group to be self-managed thus reducing consultancy costs.
- Development of plant jobs within job cost enables costs to be accurately tracked resulting in improved asset management and usage.
- The omnipresence of Greentree access ensures staff can optimally work from anywhere.
- The Greentree partner’s understanding of business processes ensures goals are quickly met.
Further Reading
To read more about this solution provider visit their online exhbit in the ERP Pavilion
