Where the time goes
For mid-market miners and mining services contractors, the same five processes carry most of the back-office load. Each one shows its pain in one of the four numbers first.
Plan-to-maintain
Work orders stay open after the job is done. Spares are ordered by phone and entered later. Shutdown plans live in spreadsheets beside the system.
Shows in: Digital Work Ratio and Cycle Time Efficiency.
Contractor procure-to-pay
Service entry sheets arrive late. Invoices come in without a PO. Month-end needs a manual accrual for goods and services received but not invoiced.
Shows in: First Time Right and Cost to Serve.
Timesheet-to-cash
For contractors: field time and dockets on paper, client sign-off by email, then disputes over hours and rates. Each dispute holds up cash.
Shows in: First Time Right and Cycle Time Efficiency.
Hire-to-retire
Rosters, flights, site inductions and tickets are checked by hand across several systems. Changes at short notice mean the same work is done twice.
Shows in: Digital Work Ratio and First Time Right.
Record-to-report
Reconciliations, site cost allocations and accruals are built in spreadsheets. The close waits on the processes above to finish.
Shows in: Cycle Time Efficiency and Cost to Serve.
The four numbers
Digital Work Ratio, Cycle Time Efficiency, First Time Right and Cost to Serve. The same definitions on every process, so you can compare them.
How we measureCost per transaction
Cost to Serve shows what one purchase order, work order or invoice costs to process. It is reconciled to your ledger, so it adds up to what you already spend.
That lets you see what each transaction adds to operating cost per tonne, or to all-in sustaining cost. It also shows where that cost sits: in the system, or in the email, phone and spreadsheet work around it.
Example: a purchase order that costs A$140 to process, of which only A$9–13 is time in the system. The rest is the work outside it.
Impira reference data set, modelled on client engagements. Not the result of a single client.
How it runs on site
People
Sessions are short and fit around rosters and shift change. We work with the planners, buyers, supervisors and finance staff who do the work.
Data
SAP, Ellipse, Pronto or TechnologyOne. We extract the records we need and write nothing back.
Results
We report capacity by process. What you do with released capacity is your call: no backfill, fewer contractors, or new work.