Mincom, a leading global provider of software solutions and services for asset intensive industries, today announced plans to launch a mobility solution designed to meet the needs of asset intensive organizations across industries including mining, utilities, public infrastructure, defense and transport. The company has selected the Dexterra mobility platform as the underlying mobility technology to extend and deploy its purpose-built applications for asset management to mobile workers.
This strategic initiative for Mincom is an extension of the current technology platform that will deliver a fully integrated end-to-end solution mobilizing asset management and critical businesses processes.
Asset intensive organizations have much more complex mobile solution needs than most other businesses. Often the majority of their workforce is deployed to manage assets in environments that can be subject to extreme conditions such as in mines or emergency response situations. Mincom will deliver a solution that provides the communications flexibility, reliability and unique capabilities they require.
Delivering enterprise solutions for asset intensive businesses, Mincom supports a diverse range of customers throughout the world, including, Australian Defence Force, Toronto Hydro, Ergon, Energex, Xstrata Copper, Newmont Mining Corporation, Metronet (London Underground) and Scottish Power.
“Mincom customers are asset intensive businesses, highly reliant on field workers to operate, manage and maintain mission critical assets,” said Greg Clark, Mincom chief executive officer. “Asset failure in a mining organization, for example, can equate to millions of dollars lost in just hours of production downtime.”
“Our new solution extends Mincom’s SOA-based technology platform to mobilize asset management and other critical business processes, helping our global customers reduce downtime, increase productivity and efficiency, improve safety and lower overall capital expense and operating costs.”
“It lays the foundation for us to deliver new applications and services over time and provide a single mobility platform for our customers, while reducing their total cost of ownership. This is timely given today’s economic environment and the need to drive quick return on investment while reducing overall costs quickly and measurably.”
Mincom’s mobility solution will be based on the new Dexterra Concert Enterprise Edition and Dexterra Field Service Suite which includes schedule and dispatch, work order lifecycle management and location-based asset and resource tracking. Together with Mincom’s industry and domain expertise, the solution delivers purpose-built asset management applications that mobilize best practice processes in asset management and integrates directly to Ellipse, the company’s Enterprise Asset Management platform as well as other leading ERP platforms including SAP and Oracle.
Mincom customers also benefit from the ease in extending this mobility solution to other critical business processes such as sales force automation, customer relationship management, procurement and customer support through the use of pre-built standards-based technology, database and application adapters for mobile integration that facilitate rapid integration with virtually all back-office systems. A key advantage is the solution requires minimal integration so time to benefits for customers is significantly reduced.
“An enterprise must be agile enough to change its business processes quickly if it is to respond to fast-changing business conditions and capitalize on new opportunities. Therefore, the information systems supporting the business processes must be capable of changing quickly,” notes Gartner, Inc. in “Using SOA to Achieve Four Design Goals”, Roy W. Schulte, September 2008. “Agility, in this case, means being able to reconfigure and extend application systems without rewriting much code or changing the databases when business requirements change. It also means implementing multichannel applications that support desktop, mobile and back-office work simultaneously.”
“By providing significant domain expertise and a global presence in more than 40 countries, Mincom extends our ability to deliver industry-specific, process-driven mobile applications that are unique to asset intensive businesses,” said Michael Liebow, chief executive officer of Dexterra. “The jointly developed mobility solution for asset management enables existing and new Mincom customers to fully maximize their investment by empowering their workforce with mobile applications that make them as productive in the field as they are in the office. We look forward to working with Mincom to build long-term customer relationships and to set the bar for the kind of results that can only be achieved through business mobility.”
Mincom will market its mobile solutions to its global customers in Australia, Latin America, South Africa, Europe and North America. Mincom will also leverage the Dexterra DevNetwork partner program and the associated distribution partnerships, including with wireless carriers.
Scheduled for delivery in early 2009, the Mincom mobility solution will include applications for asset inspections and defects, asset inventory surveys, field force management, mobile GIS, mobile GPS navigation, scheduling and dispatch. Over the next two years, the company will rapidly introduce additional applications such as mobile logistics management, time sheet management, incident and accident recording and contractor management.
About Dexterra
The business mobility companyTM. Dexterra provides a broad portfolio of mobile applications built on its open mobility platform, Dexterra ConcertTM, that enables businesses worldwide to manage and optimize their mobile workforces. Dexterra supports the largest selection of mobile devices and integrates with the widest range of enterprise back-office systems in use today. Dexterra’s end-to-end solutions help companies large and small experience rapid deployments, greater returns, higher customer and user satisfaction, and a longer lifespan over any other competing solution.
Dexterra has operations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific and a vast network of global partners including AT&T, IBM, Motorola, RIM and Telstra. For more information, visit www.dexterra.com
About Mincom
Mincom Pty Ltd is a global software and services provider with nearly 30 years experience in providing business solutions to asset intensive industries such as mining, utilities, transport, defense and government in more than 40 countries. The company has more than 1,250 staff in 18 offices across North America, South America, Australia, South East Asia, Africa, and Europe. Mincom Inc. operates in North America and is a subsidiary of Mincom Pty Ltd.
Mincom is a subsidiary of Francisco Partners - one of the world’s largest technology-focused private equity firms, with approximately $5 billion of capital under management.
For more information about Mincom, visit: www.mincom.com