OPEX Planning and Reporting
Your operational expenditure is an ongoing financial planning and budgeting exercise; finding ways to reduce or manage your overheads and keep output high is a common goal in all businesses – mining, especially in recent times – included.
The IBM solution proposed by Cortell is aimed at delivering the operational cost in real and nominal terms, so that your view is accurate, and your management can make better operational decisions.
Operational expenses for businesses in South Africa are high, especially in the mining industry, where Health and Safety, unions, labour management, and site management are in constant focus. Operational expenses also include:
- Rent
- Utilities
- Salaries and pension plan contributions
- Sales, general, & administrative expenses
- Research & development
- Property taxes
- Business travel
This solution takes you operational drivers, efficiency standards, and material prices into account, and allows you to capture fixed costs and import labour expenses from external planning tools. Dependencies between operational drivers are configured throughout the solution.
OPERATIONAL DRIVERS
- Captured in a separate module to manage frequent change.
- Captured into the solution per period (monthly or weekly)
- Can vary in detail (eg: tonnes mined per fleet or per haul truck; BCM blasted per pit or per bench; tonnes treated per ore type or per mix).
- Suitable for any organisational structure where costs are accumulated.
- Dependencies are defined between primary, secondary, and tertiary drivers with automated updates between them.
INDUSTRY STANDARDS
- Operational standards
- Geographical area standards
- Industry-specific standards
- Equipment standards
The standards you follow reflect the efficiency of your unit throughout the operating cycle
MATERIAL PRICES
Material prices affects your costs. These are usually re-negotiated on an annual basis with your key suppliers, and can be automatically applied to your budget and forecasting when they are updated.
Price capturing happens on the same schedule as your drivers, by:
- Stock code
- Material grouping
ASSUMPTION-DRIVEN COSTS
Any planning assumptions that will affect the budgeting or forecasting are defined during the solution configuration:
- Inflation percentages
- Foreign exchange rates
- Taxation percentages
- Commodities
REPORTING
Reporting requirements will vary by organisation, so yor reporting is tailored to your company’s specific needs.
- Actual vs Budget vs Forecasts
- Financial Budgeting and Forecasting
- Operational Budgeting and Forecasting
- Operational Standards Analysis and Review
BUDGET AND FORECAST FOR OPERATIONAL EXPENDITURE, INTELLIGENTLY
CONTACT US TO DISCUSS OUR EMBEDDED OPEX SOLUTION
CORTELL IS AN IBM GOLD-LEVEL PARTNER.
If you have any queries about the necessity of a seamless OPEX budgeting and forecasting method, or you’d like to discuss implementing a OPEX solution with us, please contact us now!
We’re a specialist consultancy with IBM Gold-Level Partner status that implements BI Solutions and Performance Management systems to improve agility, accuracy, speed, and predictability in your business reporting, planning, and forecasting.