acQuire Connected episode 39: Building sustainable local communities in mining and the role of procurement data in community engagement

For mining companies, earning the trust of local communities isn’t just a nice to have, it’s a necessity to continue operating. Failing to do so can result in penalties, increased economic inequality and even the loss of their social license to operate in the region entirely.

In the latest episode of acQuire Connected, Gary Ephraim, Commercial Manager – Black Mountain Mining at Vedanta Zinc International, and Audrey Steenkamp, Regional Commercial Manager for Insite, acQuire’s social performance solution, discuss the regulatory landscape of South African mining and how procurement data plays an important part in a company’s social performance strategy.

The importance of community engagement in mining

In the South African mining industry, companies operate under strict regulations set by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) to ensure they’re engaging with communities effectively and supporting long-term economic development in the region.

In the episode, Gary Ephraim shares how frameworks such as Social and Labour Plans are designed to ensure mining companies support their surrounding communities through investing in and mentoring local businesses, skills development opportunities for community members, and other forms of financial and non-financial support. The outcomes from the Social and Labour Plans assist mining companies in prioritising where and how communities can continue to grow sustainably beyond the life of the mine, rather than leaving local economies dependent on mining operations.

“It is a responsibility of the mine… to ensure that when it leaves, it leaves behind some kind of legacy,” said Gary Ephraim in the episode.

“If [mining companies] take away resources from underground and leave [communities] the way they started, then it’s a failure on the part of the mining industry.

“As you make profits, then so should they be seeing that their communities are increasing the services and the infrastructure in the community. Those are the things that should also be uplifted and improved.”

The power of procurement data in building a sustainable community

One of the most effective ways mining companies can demonstrate their commitment to local development is by leveraging procurement data to guide their decisions. Procurement data helps companies identify where their investments are making an impact, who they are investing in, and what gaps exist in community inclusion.

“Big business is never going to provide all the jobs, and it’s the little companies that are able to provide the jobs to the members of the communities,” shares Gary.

To measure an operation’s impact on a community, they can use procurement data to understand:

• how many jobs are being created through local suppliers,
• how much is being spent in the community on services, and
• what percentage of supplier contracts are going to historically disadvantaged business owners.

“We can measure that last year we spent an amount of X in a community from a procurement point of view. The following year, we set a new target and track our progress. Over time, more businesses can become profitable and sustainable within the community,” shares Gary.

Through procurement data, mining companies can track progress, adjust strategies and make informed decisions that benefit both the operation and the surrounding community.

How Vedanta Black Mountain Mining uses software to make confident decisions

To improve efficiency, accuracy and the time spent on procurement reporting, Vedanta Black Mountain Mining has adopted Insite, acQuire’s social performance solution.

“Previously, I used to do [procurement reporting] manually, and to do that used to take me like three days… Now, with the technology that we have, I can just log in and pull up the report, and I’ll have the information at my fingertips,” says Gary.

By managing their procurement data in a fit-for-purpose solution, they are using their data to:

• Build trust with community stakeholders by providing transparent, real-time data.
• Identify gaps in community inclusion and adjust procurement strategies accordingly.
• Make strategic decisions with confidence, knowing their social performance data is accurate and reliable.

Mining companies don’t just extract resources, they play a critical role in shaping the economic landscape of the communities in which they operate. Listen to the full episode here:

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Read the full transcript here:

Jaimee Nobbs (00:10):
Welcome to the acQuire Connected Podcast. This podcast features interviews with thought leaders and technology experts who are tackling data management challenges in the geoscientific, environmental and social performance industries and their impacts on the earth’s resources, the natural environment, and the communities around them. I’m Jaimee Nobbs, your host for this podcast and today we sit down with Gary Ephraim, Commercial Manager at Black Mountain Mining at Vedanta Zinc International, and Audrey Steenkamp, Regional Commercial Manager for acQuire’s social performance solution, Insite. Today, we’re looking at community engagement and the role social performance data plays in building stakeholder relationships and trust within the community, particularly within the South African mining and resources sector. I thoroughly enjoyed this chat and I hope you do as well.

Hi Gary and Audrey, thanks for joining us today. I’m looking forward to chatting to you both about the role procurement plays in community engagement and building sustainable local communities. So let’s start off with a brief overview of who you are, what you do, and some of your role and responsibilities. So Audrey, would you like to begin?

Audrey Steenkamp (01:18):
Oh, thank you so much, Jaimee. I’m Audrey Steenkamp, the Regional Commercial Manager for acQuire Technology Solutions South Africa, within the social intelligence value stream. I am responsible for expanding the footprint of the acQuire Insite technology and safeguard the ongoing commercial relationships with our customer base.

Gary Ephraim (01:43):
Thank you Jaimee. My name is Gary Ephraim. I started with Vedanta Black Mountain Mining. That was my first venture into the mining sector. It’s a very different sector from any of the other industries, especially based in South Africa. It is highly regulated, so there are a lot of regulations that decipher the way that you need to address communities and address the procurement in that space, especially like with the mining charter rules and things like that. So one of my key responsibilities as now as the Enterprise and Supplier Development Manager is looking after the SMMEs within the local communities and the labour sending areas within the mine. So these are the host communities of the mine that lie within the area very close to the mine. So effectively from the enterprise and supplier development point, we provide financial and non financial support to the entrepreneurs and the suppliers in financial support.

Basically, through the means of grants and low-interest loans, which are much lower than the interest rates that we normally would receive from the banks and also not such stringent requirements that the banks would have in that sense with the credit bureau requirements and things like that. So it’s a little bit more relaxed and enabling the businesses to have the finance to proceed with some work and effectively getting some contracts or some budget source with the mine. The non-financial support that we provide is in terms of training, looking at the gaps that are required from the SMME, how do we get them up to the quality of what is required by the mine to be able to provide the service or the material, making sure that it’s on spec. If there are financial issues, how do we go about addressing those financial issues, whatever it may be. So we actually do a gap analysis, see where they require training, and then also provide mentorship and the like for these SMMEs to be able to either operate on their own or operate within the mining space and the mining supply chain.

Jaimee Nobbs (03:47):
Before we get into the topic, Gary, maybe you would like to address this one. You mentioned that in South Africa it is quite a heavily regulated environment, particularly in the mining industry. A lot of listeners don’t perhaps don’t live in South Africa, they are based all around the world. Would you be able to give an overview as to what the mining industry landscape actually looks like in South Africa from a regulatory standpoint and why, I guess, the local community engagement is such an important factor in the industry?

Gary Ephraim (04:22):
Yeah, sure. So Jaimee, all the mining companies or mining houses within South Africa need to comply with the DMRE, which is the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy and their compliance. So we have firstly what is called an SLP, which is a social and labour plan. Every single mine that operates within the space of South Africa has to provide a social and labour plan for a five-year period. That social and labour plan includes skills development, enterprise and supply development, and your CSR, which is your corporate social responsibility, what you need to provide. So you need to actually draft a budget and you need to provide this social and labour plan to the DMRE, which approves it. And then that comes with a budget where you effectively would say that over the next five years we would need to spend so much, and that is your social licence to operate within the mine.

If you do not have that, then you can lose your mining right, or you can lose your mining licence. That’s the one portion. The second part of it is because South Africa comes from a very, the history of apartheid and previously disadvantaged communities, the transformation and inequality within the communities or within the industries resulted in them creating a mining charter where there’s a percentage of, for example, like your mining goods, everything that you purchase has to be 70% of it has to be procured and manufactured in South Africa or assembled in South Africa. And then you have services which have to be 80% procured from South Africa. And then within that there’s a percentage that has to be in terms of the previously disadvantaged communities have to have a percentage in that. So each of those targets gives you a score at the end of the day and you need to meet a minimum score in terms of your procurement. These are actually audited by the DMRE on an annual basis to see how you are complying. So that is the way it’s currently regulated.

Audrey Steenkamp (06:19):
The regulator is extremely stringent in understanding and the mining right holder has to report back on the budgetary status and establish a timeline against those projects and report back on the progress, those milestones, any risks that were identified during this period, and then how you mitigate those risks. So yes, the social licence to operate is quite strict within the South African mining industry.

Jaimee Nobbs (06:48):
Thank you for going through that. I think it’s really important just to at least understand what you’re up against. In terms of procurement, particularly procurement data, what sort of information would you be collecting for a mining company to hold that social licence to operate? Perhaps Gary, if you would like to answer from that more procurement and supplier development side. And then Audrey, if there’s any other additional types of data perhaps that you see companies working with or collecting.

Gary Ephraim (07:17):
So on that Jaimee, in terms of the data, the data that we have to collect on a monthly or on daily basis or whatever the case may be is, what is the spend actually in terms of goods and as I mentioned earlier in terms of what are the regulations. In terms of goods and services, who are you spending with? What is the value that you are spending with the transaction types that you are spending? You also need to understand what these companies call Broad-Based Black Empowerment. Each company within South Africa needs to get a certificate to show the percentage of the previously disadvantaged ownership. So all of that information in terms of certificates that they have and what is the level that they qualify for. For example, if there’s a company that has a hundred percent previously disadvantaged ownership in it, then the procurement that I spent, I actually get 135% recognition.

So if I spend a million rand, I get recognised for spending 1.35 million rand with them. So that is the kind of thing that we need to track and obviously, you need that data in order to be able to tell you where you are standing in terms of the mining charter and being compliant. And then the other thing is also it gives you the look at the opportunities because if you’re looking at the data, you have the opportunities that you can see, okay, certain areas are where I need to focus more on bringing in historically-disadvantaged companies or trying to change my policy to try and include them more and those kind of things. So that’s the need for data in managing the entire thing. Similarly, with enterprise and supplier development, you would need to track what you are spending on enterprise and supplier development? Are you giving them payment terms that are favourable that allows the enterprise and supplier development to actually create the development for them or so they grow. Instead of giving them normal 30 day payments, you pay them immediately or do you give a special pricing? Those are the kind of things that you need to track. So it’s information that would’ve to come in and that you’d have to obviously track that and see how you are measuring against it. So the data is actually very important.

Jaimee Nobbs (09:26):
Do you have anything to add to that, Audrey? In terms of data, probably from a more broad perspective that you see mining companies collecting?

Audrey Steenkamp (09:35):
Yes, we do have preferential procurement that overarch all of the projects, meaning there is the supplier, the supplier is going to implement everything, but how are we making sure we effectively track the progress, manage the resources, like local recruitment with a local provider and make informed decisions? All community projects are complex, no matter how minute it sound, how small it sound, you could track how many people were involved within the project, how many locals did you recruit, were they youth, were they male or female? Was it on a short-term contract on a long-term contract? And the provider that you have used, is the B-BBE status correct. So if your data is ultimately not collected and stored within your software, ensuring that community projects are prioritised and data-driven approaches is not possible. You cannot give accurate and up-to-date feedback. Yes,

Gary Ephraim (10:44):
Sorry. Sorry to interrupt. No, one of the other things I wanted to say, when you actually do manual data, it is open to errors because it’s manually being collected and whereas if you’re using the technology, it’s pulling directly from your system, your SAP system or whatever. So the chances of errors happening are very minimal. Obviously if it’s incorrect in the system, it’s the only time that it’s going to be incorrect in your data reporting. And it’s also when you do engage in terms of the communities, when you do engage that you actually have these facts available and it’s something that cannot be disputed because if you’ve got the facts. So I just wanted to add that. Thank you.

Audrey Steenkamp (11:27):
Thank you for that, Gary. Yes, a hundred percent what you’re saying, leveraging on technology to collect and analyse and visualise your data through charts and also understanding that you ultimately successfully delivered on your community projects. Thank

Jaimee Nobbs (11:44):
You both touched on some really interesting points and in terms of when there is a lot of data being collected by a lot of different stakeholders for many different regulatory, it can be quite a challenge trying to gather and then communicate that information. There is something you touched on in there about engaging with communities and having, I guess the facts down pat when you do go to speak to them, would you be able to talk a little bit to I guess the implications rather than from a regulatory perspective, from a community perspective, if you don’t have that information down pat, what repercussions there can be for a mining company within a local community?

Gary Ephraim (12:26):
I think the mining community is, the history of it is that mining normally starts in a community that’s not really in an area where there’s much that’s happening, it’s mining and that’s it. And many of the communities that are within these mining areas feel that they should benefit from somebody coming into their community and mining. And that is why it’s so important because these things can create a lot of problems for the mine, especially the community stakeholders are the ones that are not being taken care of or not being communicated with or not being brought into the loop of what is happening. So they definitely need to be included from an economic point of view, from a corporate social responsibility point of view. So whether you put up some structures in there and provide them with the necessary schools or whatever it may be, it is a responsibility of the mine to do that so that the people feel that the mine coming into this area has actually benefited us.

And also at some point later on when the mine closes and leaves that it leaves behind some kind of legacy. That’s something that even a community or even an industry that can continue to thrive after the mine is closed or when there’s no longer the mine is available. So the communities are, they’re very important and I think you’ve got to take into account their needs. What are their requirements, how can you change their lives? And it has to have an impact in their lives because if it doesn’t and you go there and you mine and you take away the resources from underground or wherever the case is and leave them the way you started, then I think it’s a failure on the part of the mining industry. You really need to take them along the journey with you. As you make profits, then so should they be seeing that their communities are increasing the services and the infrastructure in the community. Those are the things that should also be uplifted and improved.

Audrey Steenkamp (14:24):
One thing that is quite clear and listening to Gary, it is the community and managing their expectations. Expectations is high. We still rely on that stakeholder to work with us as the mining right holder to understand that this project that is being implemented is through the benefit of your sustainability and your growth as a community holder and ensuring that you take it further as a community when the mine is no longer there, that you remain sustainable and that you do not rely on the mining house that has started the operation. So yes, managing the stakeholders expectations is quite crucial during this phase two.

Jaimee Nobbs (15:10):
I like how you’ve touched on there about sustainability of the community in terms of sustainability. What would you say an effective successful community initiative look like in terms of on a community and then also data, what would we be looking for when we look at a sustainable project?

Audrey Steenkamp (15:40):

It could be either within water, within roads, within a rail, it could be within education, it could be within any sustainable and legacy that remains behind when you look at a project and the impact and the positivity that project would bring to the community and the sustainability and the growth for that community into the future. But when we look at the data and the impact it has on the development of that initiative, you need to take that project and close it out. You have a timeframe, so you licence the operate is five years and before you transition into your next five years, you have to close off on the previous five years and you cannot close off on the previous licence to operate until you have proper agreement and sign off from your community, your stakeholders, your municipality, as well as your legislator. And to have that smooth transition to ownership when handing over a project that is effectively managed through technology can seriously bring and de-stress a very volatile situation, which is most of the time leaning towards unrest for the mine and the operation, which is really not safe. Now in terms

Jaimee Nobbs (16:52):
Now in terms of legacy, I guess legacy in terms of the impact you can have on a local community, Gary, how do you measure something like the social impact of your procurement decisions on a local community?

Gary Ephraim (17:07):
I think the key thing, and especially with the unemployment rate in South Africa being so high, we are tasked to empower SMEs so that they can provide the jobs. Big business is never going to provide all the jobs and it’s these little companies that are able to provide the jobs to the members of the communities and things like that. So for us, I think the measurement is how many jobs are being created while we are in the process of mining. So for example, for me, if I have a company that’s followed by enterprise and supply development programme and has now received a contract, whether it’s with me or in the supply chain of the mine or whether it’s outside the supply chain of the mine, that gives opportunity for people that are now to be employed for that period of time. And I think that’s the biggest thing.

And the second thing would be the increase in the spend that you have in the community. So for example, you would measure that last year we spent an amount of X from a procurement point of view in that community in terms of purchase orders and providing them with requirements and services that they were going to provide the mine. And then the following year you set yourself a new target and say, okay, fine, that’s what we want to get to and how do we get to that target? So effectively you start ending up with more and more businesses that are becoming profitable and sustainable within the community. I’ll give you a typical example. We had an unemployed gentleman that lived in one of the communities near the mine year and he entered into our programme for a two year period, but he finished the first year, the end of his first year with the information and everything that he had learned through the enterprise supply development programme, he managed to get a contract with a construction company to the value of 3 million.

Now that is something from nothing to 3,000,001 shot, and he was able to employ quite a few people. So that shows that the success and then based on that, he took that money and invested it into other businesses within the community. So you can see him developing, he’s an entrepreneur and he’s trying to develop and that’s what it actually makes you give you a very warm feeling to say that, listen, I had something to do with that in terms of, or not me, but the mind had something to do in terms of that in empowering that guy and taking him to another level. So that’s the kind of stories you actually want to portray you want to see, and that’s how you measure how you’re really impacting the community

Jaimee Nobbs (19:35):
And the legacy you leave behind. It is fascinating to hear the different stories of how people, I guess build up businesses and I guess the opportunities that mining companies can provide and the support that mines can offer. Now, when you consider technology in the mining industry, I guess it can be quite a daunting aspect for a lot of people when considering the impact of jobs in communities. What does the role of technology play in terms of a successful community initiative? And has this evolved over time how you’ve actually communicated with communities or has technology kind of remained consistent over time?

Gary Ephraim (20:15):
No, no. Technology has definitely moved along quite a while. I mean, just as an example, I think many years ago, as I said, I’ve been 10 years with Black Mountain now in the mining industry and I remember providing the information around the mining charter. I used to do it manually and to do that used to take me like three days, sometimes four days with a lot of headaches and a lot of locking myself in the room trying to get to these numbers that we need to show and how do we get to it? And obviously now with the technology that we have, I can just go into login and pull up the report and I’ll have the information at my fingertips. So that’s what has changed in terms of how technology has done. So we’ve also used technology to look at the needs of the community.

We followed a thing which was called a set cap that we did part of the ESG. The ESG programme is obviously environmental, social and governance that all the Einstein follow as well. So the social part of it falls under some of the SLP and the requirements and things like that. So what we’ve done is actually use that tool from a technology point of view to see what are the needs, what are the communities saying? And in terms of the procurement space, for example, it came out that a lot of people, we work on the Ariba system, we work on the SAP system, and a lot of people through that technology were able to say, listen, we don’t understand the Ariba system the way it works. So we then identified, okay, we need to give training and show how this works. Then there was a lot of other people that said, listen, the problem that we have is financial managing finances, especially as I’m talking specifically now around procurement and enterprise and supplier development.

So a lot of them in that tool that we used from a technology point of view to populate and do the surveys, it came up that, listen, we struggled to manage financially based on that. We went out and we procured through our service provider Sage business packages for them to manage their bookkeeping and their accounting. So that was able to show that, listen, now you know how to manage the business better. So technology again, so where they were doing their books, for example, manually, they’re now doing it through an accounting software. So that again shows the power of technology. A lot of these things people were saying, we have a problem with your tender process. We don’t understand it. So we said, how can we look at it from in the Ariba process? How do we make the tender process more simpler so that they are able to understand it?

Because we are now using the same platform for a company that’s well established that has many, many people working for them that have access to the facilities that are able to use the software, and now you’re comparing it to a small medium enterprise that really doesn’t have the skillset. So what do you do and how do you address that? So technology, again, using that technology, we are able to say, okay, these are the gaps and then these are how we fix it. So for me, the technology, if you don’t embrace it and you don’t want to use it, you’re not going to get much out of it in any business. And even as a mining company, if I had to look at our ESD, we have to look at a strategy. What is our ESD strategy and how do we derive that strategy? The way we get to that strategy is by getting data that enables us to get that strategy and getting that data through technology is what is assisting us in getting to the levels where we want to be.

Jaimee Nobbs (23:46):
How regularly does that need to occur? You mentioned that it used to be a once a year lock yourself in a room for three days. I guess in terms of your role now, what’s the I guess, benefit of having that data on hand anytime, or what frequency would you be needing that information in order to make decisions?

Gary Ephraim (24:06):
So if I can just correct when you say lock myself in a room for three days, that was on a monthly basis, so it wasn’t on any basis. It was just to get the data for the month. So we normally do our reporting on a monthly basis, and I mean the data that pulls through, it’s not live, but it pulls through on a monthly basis. So all the transactions that are populated in our SAP system from a procurement point of view, for a payment point of view, from an invoicing point of view, everything that happens in that thing actually pulls through once a month and it’s like a one day report. And then after that I’ve got that information that’s available, but it also has the history for the previous month. So I can go back year to date to see where do I stand in terms of the mining charter because in terms of the regulation, you are audited on an annual basis and you need to provide a report from, let’s say for the mining charter from January. It’s a calendar year from January to December. So if I had to go in now I can see where I stand in terms of my mining charter requirements from a procurement point of view up to the end of October. I can check immediately now and then I can go back and say, where was I standing in three months ago as there any improvement or is there any areas that I need to improve or something that I could do? And then obviously next month that will come through again,

Audrey Steenkamp (25:24):
We forgetting about the lone wolf, the contractor to a big operation as yours. I am aware that you guys have already onboarded a few of your key and core contractors and how they support the viability and the sustainability of your social licence to operate. And through that you also have the visuality of their involvement within the community projects as well. Within the preferential procurement space, it’s not every mining rights holder that has got a view and can on a monthly basis has what Gary is saying on a push of a button, understand what the contractor is actually doing and how they’re performing and how they’re impacting the business licence to operate in the long run.

Jaimee Nobbs (26:13):
So it is something that you wouldn’t say all mining companies are doing it well just yet. It’s something that Black Mountain have got quite a good grasp on, but perhaps the mining industry as a whole is catching up in terms of the best way to report on that. In terms of opportunities going forward for technology in the mining industry, do either of you see any opportunities further improving community initiatives that the role of technology can play? Are there opportunities there? And if so, where do you see that?

Audrey Steenkamp (26:46):
I’m going to come through to the sense of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur being onboarded within B’S digital technology solution where they can then from a business perspective, understand how they perform, whether it is with an employment equity in skills development within their own business that they have created as an entrepreneur as well as their preferential footprint and community implementation. So having that digital platform for them early on within their entrepreneurial business path and growth is something that Black Mountain has really showed that they are forefront of the industry and already supplying the entrepreneurs or key contractors with Insight as a digital platform to monitor and track and create job opportunities.

Gary Ephraim (27:45):
And I think the beauty of having the technology that we currently have, I mean as the requirements change, so for example, they may change the requirements within the mining charter or they may change the requirements within the SLP is that these things can then be programmed or changed according to meet the requirements because the data set is still there, the data set will always be the same, it’ll never change, but the way the reporting is done can change. And I think that is why the technology is important because if you’ve got that technology and you are able to, as you’ve got, your business partners have got it, your enterprise and supply development participants have got it. So it makes it easy for the porting just to change rather than going and reinventing the wheel every time this happens. So I think in terms of that technology and our experience so far with Insight has been that we’ve had many requirements and every time we’ve had to look at the recording, okay, we need this reporting to be done and this is how it needs to be changed.

So we are able to go in, see where we get the data from, where the data pulls from the system and how can it then generate the reports that we require that actually adds value and it allows us to make some strategic decisions. I think from a technology point of view going forward, like the SLP for example, I know in procurement we fairly covered in terms of the data and the technology, but I think in other aspects within this SLP, which comes to maybe the projects in CSR for example, how do you track those projects and is there some technology that can help you assist in tracking those projects and showing that this is how it is. So maybe that is an area that we can improve, but I think really from a procurement point of view, this technology that we use with Insight, it’s been like a godsend for us.

I think especially from my point of view and reporting on my ESG reporting, on the mining charter and all the reports that I need to send share on a monthly basis, it makes life very simple. And as I said, even if the community, some member of the community comes up to me and says, listen, I want to have a look at this, I’m able to pull up that information and share it with them straight away. So I think that’s the beauty of the technology obviously. I think we, we’ve been working a lot on the procurement side as Audrey mentioned, in terms of getting the major contractors on board so that their procurement spend is also shown inside the database on the software as well. So I think there’s a lot more that we can do, but it’s probably going to be in other areas because I think procurement is fairly covered and I think as landscape changes, as I explained earlier, the beauty of it is that we can then change and adapt and try and create a programme or something to that sort that allows us the ability to change the reporting structures or whatever it may be.

Audrey Steenkamp (30:33):
Gary, remind me offline to show your community development in Insight. Okay. It is quite powerful.

Gary Ephraim (30:41):
Yeah, I do. I know it’s there, but I say I don’t work with it, so probably that’s the reason. I know

Audrey Steenkamp (30:48):
It’s all good. No, I agree with you Gary. Tracking, monitoring and ensuring procurement and projects at the top of your fingers available is foremost to a business success.

Jaimee Nobbs (31:01):
Now I have one more question to finish off then. It doesn’t matter how good your technology is, if your people and your processes aren’t keeping up with it at acquire. It’s something we look at across all of our solutions. But also when you consider, I guess, a good data governance framework, you are looking at the people, the processes and technology together rather than just individual pieces at Black Mountain Mining or across your career. How do you see those three working together and when they’re working together, what kind of result does that mean for the company?

Gary Ephraim (31:36):
From my point of view, the many people that generally don’t want to have technology or they don’t want to have this, let’s say for example, the Insight programme, I think it’s showing before even the training, it’s showing the benefit of it because I mean, if you get buy into it automatically, everybody that needs to input into that process will do it willingly and with enthusiasm because they know it’s going to make their life simpler. So it’s about working smart and not working hard, and also to understand that, listen, this technology is going to give me the opportunity to do things that I may have not been able to do without it. So I think getting the buy-in, and I think that’s a key word for me, is buy-in to see a lot of people. I mean, there’s many technologies that we’ve used across the mining industry, across many industries that I’ve worked in.

I worked in the chemical industry as well, and the people were not able to show me that the benefit is going to give me, and therefore based on that, I never used it. I said, adults don’t think it’s adding any value. It’s more of a headache for me than anything else. So that kind of thing is where I think it shows that the process and the people, if you are able to show that benefit and how it’s going to improve the productivity, improve their reporting, improve their lives, improve their work, automatically, those three things come into sync.

Audrey Steenkamp (32:57):
Definitely, Gary.

Jaimee Nobbs (32:59):
Alright, I think that’s all we’ve got time for. I think that was a great finishing statement, so we’ll wrap it up there. Thank you both so much for taking the time to sit down and record this with me. Thanks for listening to this episode of acQuire Connected. If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to keep up to date on the latest and greatest episodes on tackling your data management challenges, then please subscribe. If you want to support the podcast, then we’d love for you to like and follow the episode on whichever podcast player you’re listening to right now.

Outro (33:28):
Thanks for listening to the acQuire Connected podcast channel. Find us at acQuire.com au.