When faced with the necessity of implementing a low-cost SAP solution in record time to continue managing its operations efficiently, Koornfontein Coal Mine turned to Deloitte Consulting and SAP Business All-in-One to meet its needs.

In a project lasting just over three months, the solution was fully deployed, delivering a dramatically reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) without any significant disruption to business.
Koornfontein Coal Mine was acquired by a consortium led by Siyanda Resources and Aka Resources from BHP Billiton in mid-July 2006. With management and staff at the mine accustomed to using the world class SAP Mining solution in use at the time of the acquisition, the decision was taken to implement a comparable solution at a substantially reduced TCO. The mine also had to implement new business processes which were previously performed by the Shared Services Centre (SSC).
Linda Bateman, financial services manager at Siyanda Coal, explains that when the mine was part of the previous owners' operations, it used that company's Global SAP solution. "This was a version of SAP which was enhanced to meet their specific needs. When Koornfontein was bought out by Siyanda, it was established that we should remain on a SAP solution as this would provide for the easiest transition in terms of user training and user acceptance," she says.
"Having worked with Deloitte Consulting project manager William Kekane and his team which handled BHP Billiton's SAP transition in 2002, we had access to an organisation which knew our business and could therefore rapidly deploy an appropriate solution," says Bateman.
Richard McWilliams, Director of Deloitte Consulting, explains that as smaller mines were spun out of BHP Billiton, it was no longer financially viable for them to support the cost of licensing and maintenance of an enterprise-wide solution. "Basically, as a newly-independent entity, Koornfontein's management wanted to reduce the cost of ownership of the ERP solution but without losing the essential value which SAP adds in managing the operation," he says.
Led by Kekane, the Deloitte Consulting team determined a close fit for Koornfontein's requirements with its Deloitte Pre-Configured SAP Mining solution, based on SAP All-in-One.
Remarkably, with the technology selection made, Deloitte Consulting commenced with the project implementation within just ten days. McWilliams says this was in part owing to sheer luck. "We were fortunate to have the right resources available at the right time to start on the project almost immediately," he says. "Furthermore, since we had the added complication of waiting for the hardware to arrive, we were able to use our own hardware for initial development and customization. This was later converted to Koornfontein's hardware as it arrived."
Providing insight into the rapid deployment process, Kekane says Koornfontein's data was migrated and cleansed from its previous owner's SAP solution. "Focus was then given to knowledge transfer and embedding the new business processes on Koornfontein's systems," he says.
Despite the very short project time frame, Kekane says Koornfontein completed its first month-end using the new system without issue. "The client has also successfully adopted the new businesses processes, and has opted to use Deloitte Consulting for ongoing support," he adds.
As a company with an annual turnover of some R800-million, McWilliams says SAP's All-in-One solution is an ideal answer to Koornfontein's needs. Bateman agrees, saying there are no glaring differences between how SAP works from the version previously used and the SAP All-in-One version on which Koornfontein is today running its operations. "There are processes and screens which we no longer have as these are specific to BHP Billiton. However, the items and information that we need can be readily found by our users," she says.
This, Bateman stresses, was an important consideration. "As a small mine, we wanted a solution which we could manage effectively on our own at a low cost. For this reason, SAP Business All-in-One is ideal."