Significant productivity leaps often require a new generation of tools that liberate us to think and behave differently. What was once difficult, becomes painless. The complex and opaque is made straightforward and transparent. Better business decisions become possible.
And the basis of all business decisions – from greenfield developments, to brownfield expansions, fleet selection, trade off studies, etc – is reliable cost modelling.
Over the years the enable team have been exposed to a broad range of cost modelling platforms and we have seen a common set of related problems including reliability, stability and transparency i.e. understanding what is in the model and how the numerous inputs are used.
A lot of time and effort goes into building a model. Much of that time is spent getting the mechanics of the tool working and debugging formulas, not value adding. The cost modeler is often the last part of the process and ends up under enormous time pressure. The focus is on making the model work – not the quality of the analysis or decision. Those providing inputs may not get to verify their incorporation into the model or understand the financial implications.
We were convinced there had to be a better way and, after years of development, testing and use within our own business, today we are excited to announce a vastly-improved SaaS cost modelling tool for the mining industry – RuleFour.
Enable personnel teamed up with our friends at Xenith to develop a sophisticated multi-variable cost modelling platform which is easy for both novice and advanced users to learn because there is no need to see or edit any programming.
RuleFour will allow your business to build models that are:
- Accessible – RuleFour is a cloud hosted database with multiuser access from anywhere.
- Transparent – Easy navigation with hierarchy in levels, ability to pivot and tailor views to align with the user needs from the maintenance planner to the CFO.
- Understandable – Every cost element is built the same way, represented as four standard components: fixed, variable, event and matrix. No complicated, difficult to audit formulas.
- Repeatable and Fast – RuleFour uses repeatable structure and templates to control and replicate tasks to speed up the model build, manage changes and reduce human error.
The database is structured for one model, many scenarios. A connector into PowerBI allows dynamic analysis of outcomes which improves reliability and analysis to support better decisions.
We have successfully deployed RuleFour on a number of consulting tasks from budgets and studies to dispute tribunals and have seen development time significantly reduced. As we bring our team members into using RuleFour we have seen first-hand how steep the learning curve is – if you know activity-based costing, you already know how to use it!
Please get in touch with us if you would like a demonstration of how RuleFour could work in your business.
