Digital Transformation Planning for the World's Leading Mining Equipment Manufacturer

Overview

The client — an Australian-founded engineering and manufacturing company and the world's leading original equipment manufacturer for the mining industry — had experienced significant international growth, expanding to over 300 staff across five geographies on four continents. This growth had placed considerable pressure on the Information Systems (IS) group, which was operating in a largely reactive mode — maintaining operational capacity and responding to business needs on request rather than driving strategic capability.

A partner organisation already engaged with the client for infrastructure stability work identified the need for a broader ICT strategy and engaged Knowble to develop a business-aligned technology roadmap. The engagement was delivered over six weeks, producing a comprehensive three-year plan that gave leadership a clear view of the investment required to transform ICT from a cost centre into a strategic enabler.

The Challenge

The company had grown rapidly in preceding years, with revenues at their peak and a globally distributed workforce. However, shifting economic conditions in the mining sector had led to team redundancies and exposed underlying infrastructure stability issues. The IS function needed to transition from reactive operations to a proactive, strategically aligned capability — but had no forward plan to guide that transition.

Key challenges included:

• The IS team was operationally focused, with no strategic roadmap linking technology investment to business objectives
• A major ERP investment had significantly reduced inter-departmental complexity, but beyond this platform there were limited formal tools for sales, aftermarket services, customer support, and supply chain management
• Spreadsheets had evolved into de facto line-of-business applications — sophisticated enough to be operational dependencies, creating significant risk around information management, version control, and business continuity
• Corporate information management practices lacked maturity, with critical business knowledge locked in individual tools and local files rather than governed enterprise platforms
• The field workforce had insufficient tools to support the company's ambition to expand its full-service aftermarket model
• IS performance and reliability across international offices was impacting productivity
• ICT spending benchmarked above industry norms for the sector, yet the investment was not translating into proportionate strategic value

Our Approach

This engagement is a direct example of Knowble's Leadership Advisory service — providing the strategic clarity that enables organisations to make informed, confident decisions about their technology investments.

Knowble applied a structured five-component method to develop the roadmap:

• Value Chain Documentation — mapped the organisation's primary and supporting business activities to identify where technology could drive the greatest impact, with particular focus on areas beyond the traditional manufacturing core
• Operating Model — documented the current operational structure across geographies and business functions to understand the interdependencies that any technology investment would need to support
• Business Motivation Model — translated the company's strategic direction into a strategy map that linked business goals to ICT capabilities, ensuring every technology recommendation had a direct line-of-sight to a business objective
• Gap Analysis — systematically documented the existing application and technology portfolio, benchmarked ICT investment against industry standards, and identified capability gaps across the technology landscape
• ICT Roadmap — synthesised all findings into a prioritised, costed three-year delivery plan with clear governance recommendations

The engagement involved over twenty one-on-one stakeholder interviews across twelve business areas, analysis of corporate strategy and planning documents, industry and vendor research, and direct observation of operational practices.

What We Delivered

Knowble delivered a comprehensive ICT Roadmap comprising a formal strategy document and an executive presentation for senior leadership. The roadmap included:

• Strategic alignment — four strategic drivers (cost containment, market responsiveness, competitive positioning, and risk management) linking every technology recommendation to a business imperative
• Eleven ICT capabilities — vendor-agnostic capability definitions covering business reporting and analytics, workflow automation, training management, knowledge management, field mobility, content synchronisation, customer and vendor relationship management, collaboration, secure communications, data integration, and infrastructure lifecycle support
• Technology portfolio analysis — a complete inventory of the current technology estate with year-by-year recommendations (maintain, contain, extend, or retire) for each platform, identifying twelve existing licensed platforms with untapped capability and fourteen platforms recommended for retirement
• Three programs of work — twenty-four projects organised into Operational Scalability (stabilise and scale existing infrastructure), Information Accessibility (improve access to and use of corporate information), and Service Flexibility (enable mobile workforce and customer-facing capabilities)
• Financial model — a three-year investment plan with high and low estimates, demonstrating that the majority of the investment could leverage existing platform assets through operational expenditure rather than requiring new capital outlay
• Prioritisation framework — projects ranked using a risk-to-value assessment across five criteria including business impact, user experience, delivery risk, and alignment with the existing technology stack
• Delivery capability assessment — skills gap analysis using the SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) to identify the programme management, business analysis, and solution architecture capabilities required for execution
• Governance model — two new governance boards recommended: a Program Board for execution oversight and an Architecture Board for portfolio and roadmap integrity

Outcomes

The roadmap gave the organisation's leadership, for the first time, a clear and actionable plan for transforming its technology capability:

• From reactive to strategic — the IS function moved from ad-hoc operational support to having a business-aligned, prioritised investment plan with a three-year horizon tied directly to the company's strategic objectives
• Investment clarity — leadership gained a transparent view of the total investment required, with a financial model that demonstrated how to maximise the value of existing platform investments before committing to new capital expenditure
• Hidden value surfaced — the analysis revealed that twelve platforms already licensed by the organisation had functional capabilities outlined in the roadmap but were not yet configured, representing significant untapped value in existing investments
• Risk visibility — the technology portfolio analysis identified legacy platforms and information management practices that were creating operational risk, giving leadership concrete evidence to prioritise stabilisation alongside growth initiatives
• Execution readiness — the combination of prioritised projects, skills gap analysis, and governance recommendations gave the organisation a complete picture of what was needed to execute the plan, not just what to build