Natural Resources
Ensuring Operational Outcomes in Natural Resources
Mining and Natural Resources (Oil and Gas) industries are changing at a rate never seen within the last 30 years.
The mining industry is focused upon modernisation, digital mines, paperless, and autonomous sites all increase efficiency and reduce the risk to the workforce in dangerous environments. For the operational teams digital service adoption, proving a seamless user experience and all the data they require at their finger tips is the future of mining. Pinnacle is proud of its long international track record of working across the Natural Resources sector including that of mining, Oil and LNG. Our experience and capability is in providing Consulting, and digital business assurance and testing services within IT projects and business user services.
Our client successes and competitive differentiation, is our focus on ensuring improved agility, with quality outcome at speed. However, this has to be done with mitigation of risk, and the use of automation to scale your current team capacity, which reduces the cost, effort and time to deliver value through IT change.
Digital Transformation in Mining, Oil and Gas
Mining, Oil and LNG organisations reach out to Pinnacle to enable and support their IT and business teams with IT and operations digital transformation.
In collaboration, we enable CTO’s, IT and operations teams, to directly address the challenges of delivering IT change whilst minimising the risk of impact to production and prevent outages to operations and their end customers.
Pinnacle enables, supports and enables delivery of Australian mining digital transformation projects, optimising the value chain and improving quality outcomes at speed. Our industry leading intelligent AI automation solutions increase team capacity and throughput via the use of virtual workers that execute quality engineering, testing, admin tasks, business processes and reporting. This delivers change more quickly, more consistently with a improved quality outcome at a lower risk and cost profile.
Introduction to Pinnacle in Natural Resources
Pinnacle is an Australian head quartered company servicing Australia, New Zealand, and the wider APAC region with Digital Business Assurance and Quality Engineering Services. With a proven International consulting, advisory, delivery and services track record attained within Australia, UK, Europe, and USA. Pinnacle’s co-founders and Directors and senior teams all have over 30 years delivery experience working with local and international clients providing focused services that ensure effective systems engineering and assurance outcomes. Pinnacle provides value from day one, whilst supporting and enables every clients individual agile and digital transformation journey.
Pinnacle’s project and delivery experience includes the implementation, migration, upgrade, and support of complex integrated systems including, but not limited to:
- Digital Transformation implementation of new digital and mobile applications. Including moderation of systems, hardware along with business and operating processes to cloud and SaaS;
- Implementation of new green field LNG plants, operations systems, optimisation of delivery of brown field operations, field trials and validation of end user experience. Including, implementation of advanced automation for mine of the future services;
- Back office systems, migration, implementation and integration for local and international landscapes.
Pinnacle is a specialist provider of Consultancy and Services that enable risk mitigation and the accelerated delivery of IT programs. We work in multi vendor, IT, business and operations team delivery environments. Our thought leadership, applied innovation, and exceptional capability and experience helps our customers to successfully deliver their projects on time and on budget.
It is our proven track record, global network of industry thought leaders, and capability along with our R&D in leading-edge innovation into AI automation platforms that has led Pinnacle to receive multiple industry recognition awards within recent years.
What Pinnacle Do
INsight Consultancy & Advisory Services
Pinnacle’s consultancy and advisory teams are the industries leading experts with real world experience both locally and international. We support clients within Natural Resources via structured workshops, assessment and reviews to define strategy and improvement for managing Software development and quality at scale. Our advisory teams then support, coach and enable the successful implementation and delivery of the new working practices to ensure its success and continued improvement.
Systems Engineering Assurance Services
Pinnacle’s career professionals leverage our extensive project and service experience of Software implementation, migration, integration and upgrades. They use our libraries of Accelerators and Frameworks to improve reduce delivery and user acceptance effort and durations. Our teams enable your teams and end customers to collaborate and mitigate the risk of complex change.
Automation and Cloud Delivery Platforms
Pinnacle enables your teams, and end clients to meet their and improve their implementation, migration and ongoing upgrade and integration demands. We reduce the effort, duration and costs associated with the delivery of IT and Business change. Pinnacle is a recognised international leader of automation solutions and service platforms. AWS and AZURE Australia are used to provide access to both Pinnacle leading AI automation scalable platforms and BOTS, along with a wide range of international vendor and open source products.
How We Work with YOU
Customer Focused
We are acutely aware and driven to solution and align our solutions to enable customer requirements including their IT and business user teams so that our solutions are effective across the IT delivery lifecycle. We accelerate and improve quality and confidence in IT outcomes and solutions.
Improved Collaboration
Our industry experience
We leverage our many years of working within the Natural Resources and Mining industry, along with the many lessons learnt within our other industries to define and provide leading solutions and services that are tailored to meet and exceed the demands of our clients.
Industry Focused Innovation Capability Centres
Pinnacle Offerings and Services
Independent Natural Resources
Pinnacle Consultancy, Advisory and Strategy is delivered by our most senior and experienced teams. Any with over 20+ years of international IT project delivery experience.
We support and enable internal natural resources IT departments to adopt best practices, frameworks and accelerators to improve delivery maturity and agility.
Pinnacle and its teams enable and support internal IT departments to develop, deploy and run internal Agile and DevOps Development and Test Capability Centres.
We provide our Natural Resources and Mining clients with an independent view of their current delivery maturity, roadmaps for transformation and improvement and provide independent Business Assurance and Testing service to improve quality outcomes at speed from current Development and SI partners.
The “Trusted Safe Pair of Hands” in Project Delivery
Accelerate and improve quality outcomes of new end client project implementation and integration of systems.
Accelerate and improve quality outcomes of the IT and mine site Operations teams from existing legacy systems to new mobility and digital solutions.
Improve end client Acceptance and UX of Software Vendor solutions and services.
Improve effectiveness of project change, ongoing support and maintenance services for new and existing end clients.
Enable Development Vendors and SI partners to deliver more new project implementation changes through its working partnership with Pinnacle.
Enabling Scalable Support and Maintenance Services
Pinnacle’s accelerators, innovations, delivery frameworks, and global delivery experience are focused at improving the effectiveness of project change and maximising asset and capability reuse to reduce the total cost of ongoing support and maintenance services.
Pinnacle is able to fully enable and reuse automation platforms and assets created within projects, to support ongoing Support and Maintenance and regression activities.
The use of scalable virtual worker bots to execute the automation ensures that all end to end system changes are validates, saving thousands of man months of testing, which is all run in hours.
Enabling Operations
Pinnacle works independently of the System Developers and Integrators, to integrate seamlessly along side and provide an integral part of the project team.
We work with business operations teams to support and enable them to focus on their day jobs, whilst we limit the burden and distractions of continually support IT change projects on them.
We accelerate and improve confidence and quality outcomes for End Users within systems projects, and improve end user and operations Acceptance and UX of IT solutions and services.
Pinnacle works with operations teams to automate key business admin and operational processes, transactions, and the creation of key reporting, data and audit and compliance activities. We provide our business and operations automation via self service, if required. Our leading automation solutions allow for non technical team within the business and operations to manage their automation themselves without the need or reliance on expensive third party technical teams.
Pinnacle Industry Accelerators
Pinnacle has a wealth of accelerators that have been created to enable a long and established track record of successful client delivery services. These include:
Consulting and Advisory
Pinnacle’s “inSight” capability offers experienced consultants, focused accelerators, frameworks, structured workshops, methodologies and hybrid best of breed industry solutions to enable companies to improve their IT delivery maturity, capability, skills and effectiveness.
Delivery Services
Pinnacle’s Industry Centres of Competency has teams focused upon building industry experience, and delivering client services, accelerators, frameworks and delivery KIT Bag assets. This improves delivery consistency, reduces learning curves and reduces time and effort in project delivery.
Intelligent Automation
Pinnacle has a conducted machine learning and has automated capability and accelerators available “Out of the Box” for a range of operations and back office technologies, and systems.
Agile and DevOps Delivery Frameworks
Customers reviewing and defining their business strategy often focus upon driving efficiency and productivity gains as a means to lower cost, and in the process they removed the burden of NON CORE Business Functions. This frees up budgets and staff to focus on critical patient focused activities and supporting new project focused digital health initiatives.
- Quality Outcome is front-and-centre of system Engineering Assurance
- Great end user experience leads to a positive uptake of transport services
- Acceptance Driven assurance methodology drives alignment, efficient and pragmatic user sign off
- Applied innovation, tools platforms and techniques to ensure a great end-user experience
- Quality “BUILT IN” (QBI) System Engineering Assurance Processes
- Detect issues quickly and as early as possible
- Collaborative Triage & root cause analysis targets continuous improvement
- Apply leading innovation and technologies including test automation
- RIGHT first time
- Maximize reuse – use of accelerators, delivery assets, templates, kitbags, information, data, and experience
Partnership in industry specialist skills, that align and enhance our client services:
- Access to industry thought leaders
- Industry leading Cloud-enabled delivery platform with international vendor and open source engineering assurance tools
- Automation solutions that support any technology and true end to end process automation capability
- Quality Outcome is front-and-centre of system Engineering Assurance
- Identify & prioritise RISK
- Quality Assurance and Risk Based Testing Frameworks
- Ensure Robust Coverage and Condition Analysis
- Automation to Mitigate Risk from early and continuous validation and verification of assurance demands
- Access to and leveraging industry expertise and career professionals
Industry and Software Vendor specific Development of Pinnacle AI Automation Platforms
To support industry standards, clients challenges, any technologies or industry messaging standard.
No Technical Code
We have non technical business SME’s creating and maintaining their own automated processes and assets. This is only achievable through the low maintenance natural language scripts.
AI Automation enabling User Acceptance
Radically improving the User Acceptance and UX of IT change via the use of AI automation to remove the time and effort of business users to support IT projects.
AI Automation Enabling Your Teams
Pinnacle is able to offer Platform as a Service to enable and scale your teams with AI automation. We radically increase your teams throughput and capacity with the use of our AI automation and virtual workers.
Automation of ANY Technology
Automation of any system or technology, with low maintenance and no code. No technical coding means improved team collaboration and coverage. The use of intelligent impact analysis helps define and manage risk from impact of change.
Maximum Re-Use to Ensure ROI
We strongly believe in the value and savings from Automation and asset reuse. Pinnacle’s natural language scripts can be re-used not only across systems and technologies, but across our AI automation products to support automation across the software development and production systems landscape.
Scaling Data Sets and Intelligent Obfuscation
Use of full scale representative production data is critical in ensuring the success and scalable performance of systems. Pinnacle provides AI automation solutions that scale production data, and uses smart obfuscation that maintains data integrity throughout its life. This enables off shore teams to use production data sets without breaking any local data and privacy laws.
End Client Business Process and
Operational Automation Services
Scale Data and
Smart Obfuscation
Product Patching and
Regression Services
This combination of innovation as a service ensures quality outcomes at speed.
Internal Development and
Support Teams
Enginuity can also be fully integrated within CI/CD DevOps pipeline and have a low maintenance ZERO code natural language script with automated impact analysis function to significantly reduce automation maintenance efforts.
End Client UX and
User Acceptance
Authorises accelerates the UX and User Acceptance process saving months of project duration and thousands of man hours of business user effort.
Client Implementation,
Migration and Upgrade Projects
The Enginuity scalable platform and virtual tester BOTs can execute millions of tests within hours, to ensure both product, integration and end to end processes are functioning correctly.
Case Studies
Client Challenge
This international Oil and Gas giant set up an LNG (liquid natural gas) plant including the entire IT, encompassing the SAP suite of modules across 6 delivery streams: integrity management, production management, operations control, operations logistics, operations information, and facilities engineering. These streams were integrated into the SAP core.
Solution
Working alongside a Tier 1 ISV, Pinnacle resources were responsible for the system integration, end-to-end testing, and performance testing across the entire IT landscape, managing from 24-36 projects.
Pinnacle defined and deployed the program Governance model, through a structured Test Strategy Framework and a Master Test Plan across all integrated systems. Completed testing was mapped against both the Exit Criteria and the Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) to ensure full compliance and coverage. Pinnacle proprietary toolsets included a UAT framework to fast-track operational user acceptance and sign off criteria.
Client Benefits
This international Oil and Gas giant program was recorded as Australia’s largest capital project at around $300BN dollars.
Over 5 years multiple releases were conducted per year. The program saw a 98% delivery success rate, delivering on time (to the day) and within budget with only 2% of projects slipping into subsequent release. The implemented test team used Pinnacle accelerators that maximised reuse, and team utilisation was retained with flex periods during key test execution and defect fix periods.
The UAT framework saved the client on average $2-5M per year, as the utilisation of the operations teams was reduced by approximately 80%.
Client Challenge
An international mining company with over 50,000 employees has committed to a digital future for its mining and rail operations with a Digital transformation program, including integration with legacy SAP ECC modules and other non-SAP systems. Due to FIFO and shift patterns, very limited acceptance testing was being conducted and outages to the digital application on mine sites were resulting in a fall-back to paper-based maintenance.
Solution
Pinnacle utilised their AI tools QMFactory and Enginuity for the clients’ digital applications and the legacy SAP ECC work planning, scheduling and maintenance modules. The scope was extended to automation on a TaaS subscription model. Data driven testing supported boundary, edge cases and negative testing.
Automated, timestamped integration testing ensures that Enginuity makes a change in one system and tests and verifies the value in the other system. Performance issues are detected early, and screenshots and videos capture and report Defects in QMFactory whenever a Test Step fails to aid developers.
Client Benefits
Utilising Enginuity, several product releases are being tested each day, all changes are picked up and tested and a full regression pack runs within hours unmanned overnight. This daily automated execution capacity equates to a saving equivalent to a team capacity of 15FTE’s for 10 days.
The number of production outages has dramatically decreased, equating to a resource cost saving of minimum of $1M per year. The customer is now planning to roll the Pinnacle platforms QMFactory and Enginuity into other active projects in the program portfolio.
Client Challenge
A global Oil and Gas company, modernising its legacy ECC landscape in preparation for full migration to SAP S/4HANA. The legacy SAP ECC HR module is being separated into SuccessFactors using SAP Activate methodology.
Solution
Pinnacle utilised their AI automation platforms QMFactory (test management) and Enginuity (test automation) to deliver on the overall outcome of the testing across the 3 phases within the SAP Activate methodology, including creating the Master.
Our Test Analysts conducted test design using the SAP SuccessFactors design workbook and using QMFactory ensuring 100% test coverage, including payroll. The tests created in Enginuity used codeless AI automation and the full set of test cases were executed daily by the Enginuity virtual testers. Enginuity also applied different user loads to the test environment so that SuccessFactors response time could be monitored.
Client Benefits
Instead of conducting some testing of the payroll using a random sample of employees, in less than a month, Pinnacle had conducted 3 full monthly payrolls for every employee including all grade and location allowances.
An unexpected outcome of the automated payroll testing to the customer was to demonstrate that the new SuccessFactors system was calculating payroll correctly; nearly all the discrepancies were inaccuracies in the existing legacy ECC payroll processing. The customer then applied rectifications to employees who were impacted by these inaccuracies.
Value and Benefits to Natural Resources Clients
Save Project Duration, Effort and Cost to Make IT Changes
Mitigate RISK of change within production and reduce outages
Enable IT project capacity and throughput without increasing headcount
Reduce the burden of Operations Teams effort to support IT change
Reduce the ongoing support and maintenance effort and cost of IT systems
Allow Operational teams to automate more operational admin tasks and processes
Value to YOU as a Natural Resources Client
We Enable You to WIN more Business
Using Pinnacle as part of your digital transformation to support and enable IT implementation, migration and upgrade team and strategy, shortens your project durations and reduce your team effort and costs. Allowing you to mitigate risk and make more change reliably into production.
Improved User Acceptance
We provide a clearer, quicker and improved user acceptance process, which means less disruption to your operations teams, greater levels of confidence in what’s been delivered and a fast sign off of the project.
We do MORE for you
We save you money and effort by working with your development partners and support & maintenance teams. We ensure a fully automated process, improved quality and governance and maximise asset reuse to maximise ROI from your project investment. We achieve more coverage and mitigate the risks of change within your production integrated systems landscape. And, we do it in a fraction of the cost of your current delivery models, via the use of our leading AI automation and virtual bot workers.
Value to YOUR Operations Teams
Customer Focused
Our service improve the collaboration, communication and transparency between Operations and IT teams. We reduce the effort Operations teams need to invest in projects and the acceptance process. This means reduced impact and cost on operations teams to support IT and more time to focus on their day jobs.
Digital Business Assurance
Our experience and skilled teams and services support and enable more efficient project and support and maintenance delivery changes. We leverage our frameworks, accelerators, and advanced AI automation to ensure coverage and mitigate the risks and impact of change. Our collaborative-led tools & frameworks, improve visibility, reporting, and operations confidence in the quality and outcomes that they are getting.
Re-use Provides Ongoing Value and Savings
Going the extra mile inefficient IT delivery, the reuse of automation assets created for specific systems, user roles, and integrated processes provide a range of assets that support ongoing savings and ROI to Operations teams and to the IT changes made.
Benefits to YOUR IT and Business Teams
Our Project and Service Experience
Our international experience and leading innovation in automation and project service delivery have provided Pinnacle with extensive industry recognition. Pinnacle provides these capabilities to Natural Resources and Mining customer to enable and support their teams with their digital transformation and IT project change. We work the way you want, providing fully integrated capability and platforms to accelerate and mitigate the risk of IT changes to your production and Operations teams.
Our Unique Automation Services
Pinnacle’s capability to manage and mitigate risk to integrated systems regardless of technology, with coverage at speed set Pinnacle apart from our international competitors. Within hours we are able to validate the impact of change and execute millions of tests against defined builds, environments and device permutations. We provide the quality outcomes at speed so that your operations teams have the reliable systems they need to successful do their jobs.
No technical or development skills required means business users and product owners can use Aurora to create and maintain their automated systems and business processes.