Listed in London and Kazakhstan, KAZ Minerals is a leading natural resources group and one of the world’s largest producers of copper. The company operates the Bozshakol open pit mine in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan, the Aktogay open pit mine, three underground mines in the East Region of Kazakhstan, and the Bozymchak open pit mine in Kyrgyzstan.

The Group Finance team at KAZ Minerals recognised the need for a change in their corporate performance management (CPM) systems and sought to conduct an evaluation of alternative solutions. However, they lacked a framework for vendor evaluation that mitigated the risks of acquiring a replacement system. Concentric Solutions offered a structured path for aligning software selection with business requirements.

The challenge

Legacy reporting tools were inflexible, lacked vendor support and created audit risk. A desire to deliver financial reporting, planning and production data analytics from a single source system could not be met by incumbent applications.  Considerable manual intervention was needed to manipulate data between differing software solutions in order to complete key reporting cycles.

With a small head office team, KAZ Minerals needed a better way of managing the group financial close. They believed in the vision of an integrated CPM platform, but lacked the time and means to identify objective differentiators between vendor offerings.

 

The solution

Concentric provided the industry insight and guidance to ensure that a diligent approach was adopted in selecting a system that offered an optimal solution fit. The selection team needed greater validation of the solution choices, but had limited availability to devote to this objective.

Our ‘Better Business Case Framework’ helped KAZ Minerals ask the right questions up front. It assisted them in identifying systems that met business needs, offered functional value for money, and also provided attractive cost of ownership models that could be delivered and supported successfully. 

A discovery questionnaire was completed, and subsequent workshops with key stakeholders enabled the definition and clear understanding of priorities. This led to scoring matrices being updated to reflect functional requirements, which provided an evidence-based approach to assessing suitable solutions.

KAZ Minerals were then able to objectively consider bid responses and vendor presentations within a framework tailored to their specific needs. Concentric also facilitated vendor solution demonstrations and coordinated customer reference call agendas and meetings, ensuring independent validation of each vendor’s value proposition.

We also facilitated vendor solution demonstrations and coordinated customer reference call agendas and meetings, ensuring independent validation of each vendor’s value proposition.

The Concentric team then provided project preparation support, helping structure project scope by phase, advising on delivery models and frameworks, and supporting the preferred supplier in their preparation of an initial project plan. This enabled KAZ Minerals to gain a representative understanding of the solution delivery costs and timescales, and facilitated better alignment between KAZ Minerals and the chosen supplier. 

 

Key benefits

• Formalisation of key business needs
• Evaluation of the licence and commercial models that fitted KAZ Minerals’ requirements
• Identification of ROI factors
• Quantifying the cost of the solution

 

The results

Following Concentric’s ‘Advisory Framework’ enabled KAZ Minerals to effectively and efficiently evaluate shortlisted solutions to ensure that vendor proposals:

• delivered strategic value (met key business needs);
• delivered economic value (suitable functionality was offered that negated dependencies on spreadsheets and manual processes);
• delivered financial value (deployment models introduced benefits and efficiencies for an acceptable cost of ownership);
• delivered management value (project success was achievable).

"We chose Concentric because we felt that their understanding of our legacy systems, their market knowledge and their pragmatic approach, would enable us to make solution choices faster.

Concentric led us through a detailed evaluation of the relevant market leading consolidation systems enabling us to identify the best-fit solution. They drove the evaluation process which allowed us to run a diligent selection project with the involvement of just 3 key stakeholders part time.

Throughout the process, Concentric provided the selection team with useful guidance and insightful advice driven by their understanding of our business requirements and knowledge of each vendor’s product.  Their coordination of each step of the process helped mitigate the overhead on our head office resources, whilst ensuring we considered appropriate factors in a logical order." - Finance IT Projects Manager, KAZ Minerals

 

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