MMG

From an information management perspective, the firm lacked a single, reliable, centralized source of such information. This meant there were multiple, uncontrolled copies of documents stored across several repositories, and each site developed its own processes around document control, leading to inconsistencies in information governance.

“Initially, we managed our plant maintenance documentation within SAP, but we soon realized this was not ideal as it lacked basic document management principles ‘out-of-the-box,’ such as version control, and it had limited workflow capabilities,” said Simon McCarthy, Lead, Information Management and Reporting at MMG Limited. “Difficult and time-consuming customizations were developed to overcome the limitations, but the user interface was not ideal, it wasn’t always reliable and the IT maintenance overhead was too high.”

In 2012, MMG commenced a project to refresh and perform a major upgrade to its SAP platform. This presented an ideal opportunity to transform how it manages and serves documentation to its staff and contractors.

“The goal of the SAP upgrade project was to improve the ERP solution through facilitation of standardized business processes across the organization. From an information management perspective, the goal was to improve our business-critical document management,” commented McCarthy. “Having started out using OpenText™ Content Server in our legal department, we turned to OpenText once again to address our information needs. OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP^® Solutions was identified as the right solution at the time thanks to its broad capabilities, close integration with SAP and strong partnership between OpenText and SAP.”

MMG enlisted the expertise of the OpenText Professional Services team for the initial implementation. They provided specialist knowledge of the solution needed to solve its business requirements and ensure successful delivery.

“Having suffered the pitfalls of developing customized solutions in the past, the solution was effectively implemented ‘out-of-the-box.’ With the flexible configuration options available to us, we were able to avoid custom code development, which meant future upgrades would be simpler, faster and more cost effective,” explained McCarthy. “Native OpenText tools, such as OpenText™ WebReports, provide the ability to deliver user interface customizations, without code development.”

MMG currently partners with local OpenText partner organizations and other vendors to provide the best set of knowledge and skills in specialized areas, such as change management and SAP consultancy.

“The approach of engaging the best capabilities for the task has been a very successful approach for us, contributing to the ongoing success of OpenText and SAP projects at MMG,” said McCarthy.

The intuitive smart user interface, introduced as part of the latest upgrade, has been met with positive feedback from MMG’s business users.

“Users have been impressed with the easy-to-use, smart interface, which declutters their environment, allowing them to focus on the task at hand. Power users are also impressed with the audit tracking and reporting capabilities they have available,” said McCarthy. “Many of our users, however, are unaware they are even using an OpenText solution, which we see as positive. Content stored in OpenText can be viewed through a number of Microsoft^® SharePoint^® workspaces, which are straightforward to use in instances where a user only has read-access to view controlled documents.”

Ensuring collaboration and control, working documents in SharePoint are captured using rules defined in OpenText™ Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft^® SharePoint^® and archived in OpenText™ Content Suite Platform where they continue to be tracked and made available for business use.

“With OpenText we now know what information we have, where it resides, who reviewed it, who approved it and have a complete history and version control,” stated McCarthy.

In total, approximately 4,000 staff and a comparable number of contractors use OpenText directly or indirectly. Users have intranet access via SharePoint and all controlled documents are served from OpenText. On any given day, up to 1,500 users access documentation with approximately 300 more directly adding documents and editing and starting document-based workflow processes. As a result, OpenText is providing a company-wide, single source of the truth for all users, with one common set of processes.

As is common across the mining industry, MMG operations are conducted in remote areas around the globe and future plans include the introduction of OpenText Content Server syndication at remote locations, where data bandwidth is often limited or unreliable. This will further improve access speeds for users at locations, such as mining operations, to deliver information where it is needed. The digital team at MMG that is responsible for innovation is creating an information advantage by building more applications integrated with OpenText solutions. Pulling content into a variety of applications has been made much simpler with the introduction of the latest release of Extended ECM for SAP Solutions.

“We use OpenText to help improve our business. From an information governance point of view, the solution is successful. We did not have complete control of documentation before OpenText, now we can access content instantly and rely on what we see. We know who did what and when and can see the status of every document, which is critical for governance,” concluded McCarthy.