Tronox is a NYSE-listed vertically integrated producer of titanium dioxide and inorganic chemicals. Tronox mines and processes titanium ore, zircon and other materials and manufactures titanium dioxide pigment, specialty-grade titanium dioxide products and high-purity titanium chemicals. Their products add brightness and durability to paints, plastics, paper and other everyday products.
“A major benefit for us is when organisations are very open. We’ve got great engagement with Tronox and a very open relationship which helped us achieve so much more.”
Mark Simpson Director, Sales, Strategy & Analytics DXC Technology Practice for Oracle
Tronox has a global footprint, with nearly 7,000 employees across six continents, is the world’s leading integrated manufacturer of titanium dioxide pigment.
As a global leader in the mining, production and marketing of inorganic minerals and chemicals, and with an uncompromising focus on operating safe, reliable and responsible facilities, all work done by the IT team at Tronox is focused on providing technology that supports safe, quality production at the lowest possible cost. Lee Albert, IT project manager for Tronox commented, “We seek to achieve our organisation’s vision by enhancing the value chain from the mining side all the way down to the titanium dioxide production and packaging.”
Challenge
DXC Technology has worked as a close strategic advisor to Tronox since implementing Hyperion Planning on premise some 14 years ago. Since then, Tronox has experienced significant growth and as a result, inherited several disparate systems.
With the existing Hyperion solution reaching end of life for support, and as part of its broader digital transformation strategy, Tronox turned to DXC to help select and implement a new cloud-based planning, budgeting and forecasting solution.
Tronox, like many organisations had unique requirements, but was looking to address common sales planning and logistics issues, for example, travelling with empty loads. The company sought a contemporary, digital solution to drive business planning decisions.
Solution
DXC analysed how Tronox could leverage new digital technologies in the cloud. Oracle Planning, part of Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud, was selected for its user interface, strong functionality on mobile platforms, and SmartView Excel add-in.
Albert commented, “Our motivation to move to a cloud solution stemmed from DXC’s recommendations. We were guided by them and felt strongly that a cloud solution was ideal. Oracle Planning provided a much better solution in the cloud at a much lower cost with very little overhead in terms of IT support. In addition, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model provides constant upgrades every month. That means we get new capability, functionality, and power within the application every month.”
Oracle Planning provides a fantastic platform for organisations of any type to deliver a true digital transformation. Mark Simpson, director of Sales, Strategy & Analytics for DXC’s Practice for Oracle said, “Typically, budgeting and forecasting tools like this have been used for workforce and revenue planning.
However, with the application now so powerful, scalable, and flexible we can easily deliver functionality like the complex processing model required by Tronox.”
Why DXC
Tronox chose DXC, not only because of its previous relationship, but also because it knew DXC had the capability to deliver and the vision to help build a future-proof and flexible model that would run well over many years. Tronox trusted DXC’s knowledge of software enhancements and its experience with Oracle cloud solutions.
DXC’s Practice for Oracle is the largest independent provider of Oracle consulting and managed services in Australia and New Zealand. Oracle has globally recognised DXC’s expertise and skills with accreditation as an Oracle Platinum Partner, Oracle Cloud Premier Partner and Cloud Managed Service Provider.
“We’re happy to be starting on the journey, and excited that we already have a great working example of SaaS in the cloud working really well. Oracle Planning can become a model for us for the future.”
Lee Albert IT project manager, Tronox
Industry-specific intellectual property
With extensive expertise and repeatable intellectual property (IP) in the mining and manufacturing sectors, DXC implemented its unique industry specific Accelerate Templates to leverage the power of Oracle Planning. DXC’s Oracle specialists have designed and developed a suite of pre-built industry specific Accelerate Templates which provide prebuilt models. This allows organisations to get up and running quicker, as well as providing a best practice industry guideline.
Working closely with Tronox, DXC drove significant innovation. Delivering a complete, end-to-end mining and manufacturing application, the DXCsolution also provides advanced forecasting, logistics and sales planning functionality. Close collaboration ensured DXC understood where the business is headed and the latest technologies it was looking to invest in. Simpson said, “A major benefit for us is when organisations are very open. We’ve got great engagement with Tronox and a very open relationship which helped us achieve so much more. With insightful and clever people like Lee (from Tronox) combined with our expertise, it’s amazing the things our partnership can achieve.”
Results and benefits
Moving Tronox’s legacy on-premise Hyperion Planning solution to the cloud drove significant change across the business and delivered a new user experience, improved performance and more modern digital functionality. It’s reliable, accurate, and calculates in real time, allowing Tronox to produce an integrated set of numbers that models the business accurately while utilising the knowledge and experience of a range of people all working in the system at once.
The solution delivered is very comprehensive and helps Tronox from an operational perspective by modelling its entire complex processing, delivery, logistics, and sales journey from raw material all the way through to customer satisfaction. It has changed the way Tronox people interact with data and provides greater access and higher availability. This means improved reliability, faster calculations and response time, minimal risk of downtime, and better overall forecasting accuracy.
Oracle Planning enables opportunities for Tronox to further accommodate new sources of feedstock and the solution can grow with the business as required. Modelling can also be extended to other parts of the organisation and it provides flexibility for a more diverse workforce because people can access systems from anywhere, including some of the very remote areas that Tronox operates in.
Albert commented “The solution is browser agnostic and works on mobile platforms. Our sales managers (who travel a lot) can update their forecast in the back of a taxi in South Korea on the way to the airport. That was not previously possible, so efficiency gains are enormous, and the ability to access our data from wherever we may be geographically means we can make the best decisions for the business quickly.”
“We seek to achieve our organisation’s vision by enhancing the value chain from the mining side all the way down to the titanium dioxide production and packaging.”
Lee Albert IT project manager, Tronox
The future
The next phase will look at predictive planning, to see whether some existing statistical models can be leveraged. Albert also sees opportunities for enhancements — particularly around the feedstock blending process and costing. The model will be globalised with navigation flows and the ability to enter text commentary for deeper insight. Predictive planning for non-driver costs will be implemented and the data load from the ERP system will be enhanced to improve price, volume, efficiency and variance analysis.
For Tronox, digital transformation means using software and technology to automate business processes to facilitate safe, low-cost, high quality tonnes. It means allowing data to flow in a vertically integrated fashion in the same way the physicals of the business need to flow.
Albert concluded, “The biggest challenge with our digital transformation is the fact our organisation grew dramatically and inherited disparate systems. It’s difficult to take that complexity and merge it into something new, standard, consistent, and simple. We’re happy to be starting on the journey, and excited that we already have a great working example of SaaS in the cloud working really well. Oracle Planning can become a model for us for the future.”
Simpson concluded, “It’s often challenging for organisations to see how they can transform processes to support new technologies. We helped Tronox walk through from old to new processes to drive that change. Much of our role is facilitating the change process while driving best practice for an organisation, and we have the deep Oracle expertise and repeatable industry IP to help accelerate the journey.”