Case studies

These large-scale construction projects came with complex administration, including permits and other legal procedures, environmental and ethical oversight, contractual obligations, and more. Juggling multiple projects with overlapping deadlines, priorities, and resources was inundating the teams and their software. In addition, the government of the country where the mine was located was unable to provide a robust management framework for such a large-scale infrastructure project at the time. Compliance management was quickly identified as one of the biggest risks to a successful mining project.

We conducted an in-depth review to discover the main causes for staff being overwhelmed by conflicting information. We discovered that risk mitigation was being managed through a cumbersome combination of manual spreadsheet entry, email relay, and employee memory, resulting in knowledge being frequently lost. Oversight of compliance became less feasible over time. A lack of centralized information or version control led to conflicting truths. We conducted a workflow dependency analysis and produced business process models to illustrate ways in which tasks could be run concurrently versus serially to streamline some operations. We restructured their data for importing to a new platform.

Risk mitigation was at the forefront of our design. We identified that an international team operating in a variety of environments—including often on site with little bandwidth—needed a highly configurable, easy-to-use, web based solution. They needed something bespoke that could work with their specialized software. Our first step was to implement an online version of Clockworx that could facilitate delivery of the compliance management system. This aided in creating business process models that gave the client a clear view of possible workflows. After importing the restructured databases, we configured Clockworx to accommodate all myriad obligations. Our cloud-based workstation and mobile platform included the ability to allow users to work in their own language, record actions assigned to users to provide accountability, and automate escalation of issues up the chain of command. Clockworx also manages project auditing through task alerts, linking project documentation, and recording changes to data entries.

A breakdown in communications was leading to priority orders going unfulfilled, and specs on fulfilled orders were sometimes incorrect. The result was that both product quality and customer satisfaction were dropping. This was a recurrent problem, and the team was struggling to share information in a timely fashion. Additionally, different teams relied on different systems to track their data. This abundance of software made gathering KPIs arduous, so performance was difficult to gauge until weeks after the fact. Responsiveness to any issues was slow. The workflow was not easily managed, orders were backing up, and problems were getting missed.

Our solution was focused on project, workflow, and data management to create more efficient and accurate information sharing across the entire company. A system that would use automation to prioritise projects that met certain criteria was of primary importance. Lead scoring and sales tracking would be helpful for both keeping orders on track and learning lessons from incomplete sales. A chain of review for decision-making was identified as a helpful aid to efficiency. Document generation software and a fully configurable, collaborative dashboard to provide oversight and data access would keep performance on track and give relevant real time reports as needed.

We conducted requirements capture meetings with the client and returned business process models and workflow maps to reflect their aspirations. We identified that the client already had a lot of good software applications in place, and we integrated them through a bespoke version of Clockworx early on in the process to facilitate a phased delivery of the final system. We were able to fill CRM and quotations generation needs in the software provision by using capabilities within the Clockworx platform. The final system spans the entire sale process, from pre-sale and quotation to deployment and post-sale servicing. We used existing APIs, synchronization tools, and external automation to make order prioritisation more straightforward, to escalate decisions, and to notify team members of changes to orders. We made use of Clockworx’s multi-lingual functionality to give an international workforce added advantages. By bringing all data onto one dashboard, we created a centralized hub for information where “one truth” can be readily accessed by everyone from multiple devices and channels at any time, including the financial data needed by the owner.