With the latest Pronto Xi 720 now available, miners and service providers comprising Tribune Resources, K92 Mining, Carey Mining and Zara Mining Share Company have all said ‘yes’ to the software and its pack of new features.

“It was decided to implement an ERP system in order to take advantage of the technologies available to integrate our business processes,” Zara Mining general manager Mike Kelly said.

“Pronto Xi was chosen, as it has become widely accepted throughout the mining industry.”

Pronto Xi 720 builds on the 710 version and comprises the same multi-currency and geo-consolidations upgrades, in addition to a fixed asset module that allows users to input any number of depreciation regimes.

“In the mining space you are likely to have to report to multiple stock exchanges in multiple jurisdictions and what is allowed by way of depreciation regimes in Australia may be different to what is allowed in Canada, in the US or the UK,” Pronto Software business development manager Terry Leister said.

“The major work we did in the financial area for 720 was to allow any number of depreciation regimes to be put in place simultaneously.

“We also did some significant work in geo-budgeting and on the connectivity of the product to the outside world through what we call Pronto Connect.”

Pronto Connect relies on an architecture of web services that enable users to access the software and make informed decisions wherever they are.

“That also allows us to plug Pronto into anything else that is in the field, be it a mines management system for the physical management of mines rather than the financial management, or anything else a customer will want to do,” Leister added.

“The nirvana here is one version of the truth and the financial system should be the repository of that one version of the truth – that is our objective.

“I think the biggest problem that is faced out there is that there are many disparate systems in a mine site and you spend days or weeks pulling it all together so that the CFO can get his ‘what did we make last month’ numbers out in a timely fashion.

“[Here] the financial data is coming out of Pronto, the usage data is coming out of Pronto and if we bring into that data about how many tonnes are going through a crush plant, we’re now starting to grab all the data into Pronto in real time from its original source.”

But this and the fact Pronto Xi is a multi-user, multi-currency, multi-company, multi-project system, is not its differentiating factor.

According to Leister, what makes Pronto special is its engagement regime with customers.

“There is good software in the field, otherwise the rest of our competitors wouldn’t be making money, [but] our differentiation has been for some time how we do business with people,” he said.

“No two miners do things exactly do things the same way. We really look for what makes them unique and our aim is to emphasise that.

“We see the software … as nothing other than a tool to help a customer get the business outcome they need.”

This means Pronto Xi can be tailored to suit any operation and business outcome.

“At the moment we support English, French and Spanish as far as languages are concerned, but if someone said ‘we need Zimbabwean tomorrow’ there would be a need to create a language pack for that,” Leister said.

But this personalisation of the software does not restrict users from upgrading and accessing Pronto’s latest developments.

“The key is to give them the flexibility without putting them out there on an island where they cannot continue to take advantage of our development cycle,” Leister explained.

“In a perfect world every two to three years, we’re saying ‘here is the new release, it’s about time to look at moving’ and they can upgrade in a matter of weeks or months, not years.”

Pronto recently exhibited its software at Austmine, a mining equipment, technology and services conference. 

Leister said the product was received “brilliantly”.

“It’s rare to sign business at an event but there were four of us at the event and we all walked away with new people to talk to,” he said.

Asked whether Pronto was on track with its next incremental release, Leister said: “Watch this space.”