Published in September 2008 Australian Longwall Magazine

 

Besides helping suppliers keep track of their finances, Jim2, devised by Sydney software house Happen, helps them keep track of their jobs.

 

Happen managing director Paul Berger described Jim2 as “very hands-on software”

 

“Most of these guys are very job oriented,” he said. “Often these guys have hundreds of jobs on the go at any one time.”

 

However, putting it in place is not simply a matter of swapping it with the old accounting package. The business has to undergo some cultural change too. The idea behind Jim2 is that everybody in the business uses parts of it for their daily work.

 

Drill Mining Industry director Terry Noonan admitted that the system had forced him to rethink the way he did business.

 

When Australian Longwall Magazine spoke to Noonan, he had been working with Jim2 for about a month.

 

“It’s a whole management process for us,” he said.

 

Jim2 can handle the ordering of parts for each job. It can build a relationship between the job and the invoice number. It can help a company control its stock and track serial numbers.

 

There is even a function for ordering steel – a common issue in the mine supply game.

 

In some cases users have opted to have one “job” divided into several. This helps keep track of the true costs of goods sold. For example, it factors in the price of the individual components that go into putting an item such as a pump together.

 

Jim2 will take a mining supplier from several concurrent users to 100 or so.

 

One of the benefits of Jim2 that Happen promotes is that it enables a company to consolidate its management systems.

 

Berger admitted there would have to be a bit of a culture change in companies applying the Happen system.

 

“In a traditional company of about 15 staff there might be only two people using the accounting software,” he said. “If you’re using our software, typically everybody will be using it.”

 

Happen helps its customers make the transition to having such a computer-driven management system. It provides training at the same time as it is implementing the system.

 

Interestingly, Jim2 grew out of the computer service industry, which is where Berger hailed from. He said that industry was also quite job oriented so moving it into the mine service industry was not such a stretch.

 

One Jim2 convert is Ron Russell who owns Moranbah Trade Services. He too was in the computer industry, running a computer shop in Moranbah. When he started his new business, bringing Jim2 across was an easy choice.

 

Noonan said he had turned to Jim2 because he realised his business was getting too big for one person to handle.

 

Mackay-based consultant Action Coach is helping Drill Mining Industry create and implement those new management systems.