IT needs in the mining sector focused on operational field, says Mincom

After having mostly covered their needs in the backoffice space, the main IT demands from the Latin American mining sector are now concentrated on the operational field, heavy industry enterprise software provider Mincom's Latin American president, Gary Poole, told BNamericas.
The mining industry contribution to Mincom's Latin American operations is over 80%, while globally it is around 45%.
Poole said the biggest problem in mining is related to lost opportunities in the operational area. "Companies lose a lot of money when they have large reserves, or underground reserves, as you won't know what's there until you mine it. Then you have to excavate, transport and crush it, and in each stage there are losses," he said.
According to the executive, today mining firms need solutions that provide transparency regarding where the losses are in the whole production chain.
Mincom has developed a new strategy to target the mining industry, which includes a new segmentation of the vertical.
"In the past we treated mining as mining. Now we are segmenting the market into commodities, and we are developing solutions for each of the commodities, in order to offer more value to those particular mining companies, over and above what we offer with our standard products to mining," Poole added.
The fastest growing segment within the mining industry is, according to Poole, the mid-tier market, including those that are just finishing exploration. For them, Mincom has launched its Accelerator solution, which comes preconfigured for their segments.
"We expect much of the revenue of mining to come from those mid-tier companies," Poole said.