Marketing and logistics management

You may have Pulse Production as your master statistical recording system for all mine and quarry production and processing, effortlessly capturing, integrating, interpreting, and reporting on automatically captured data, imported data, integrated ERP data, auto-calculated data, and data entered by humans via mobile devices and PCs. Validated, adjusted, and reconciled – this output data flows through to Pulse Marketing and the sales team for easy forecasting and quoting, the optimization of blends and margins on sales contracts, and logistics management. Otherwise, production and stockpile data from other sources can be integrated for Pulse Marketing to manage from there. Developed over 35 years in close collaboration with real-world mining companies, Pulse Marketing is rapidly configured and implemented to manage sales and logistics in all resource sectors, including green energy. With fully integrated forecasting, automated workflows with predictive intelligence, sales mobility, and real-time analytics, Pulse Marketing revolutionizes the commercial management of mining.

Pulse offers state-of-the-art integration and B2B interconnectivity to save time and eliminate errors caused by guesswork and incorrect referencing of vital information. For example, exchange rates for any number of currencies are updated automatically throughout the system by live digital interactions to facilitate international mining operations and resource trading. Quality statistics can be confirmed via live 2-way links between geotech laboratories for product quality testing certification results. Rail transport and shipping logistics are efficiently organized and managed with Pulse via 2-way live interfaces with rail and port operators, as available. The most time-consuming and error-prone tasks traditionally associated with tracking, marketing, selling, and supplying extracted resources are made automatic and failsafe by Pulse Marketing.

The customer relationship management (CRM) system and sales contract management system within Pulse are developed specifically for mining. Define and store complex contract quality details including penalty and/or bonus formulations, easily handling any multiple pricing status and securely storing the documentation for contracts. Get into long-term planning through forecast contracts – conduct any modeling, including what-if analysis, without leaving the system as embedded Microsoft Excel continues to be your favorite tool for working with numbers. Manage domestic, export, intercompany, and swap/loan contracts with ease and the kind of efficiency you’ve only imagined.

The Pulse system comes with Pulse Budgeting for fully integrated budgeting and forecasting using the latest actuals from the system. Use Microsoft Excel from within the Pulse system as your favorite tool for working with numbers, saving and sharing drafts, and going live when ready. Auto-calculations from planned and captured metrics provide the predictive intelligence to forecast outputs and values based on logical assumptions. Mining is a dynamic environment and you’ll love being able to forecast and re-forecast production results whenever conditions change, in almost no time. Manage more sales more profitably with fewer people working smarter, not harder.

Pulse Marketing has full integration with Pulse Financials. Native integration means the immediate flow-through of data between sales, accounts receivable, and cost centers, access to the latest multi-currency data drawn by Pulse Financials, and integrated tax accounting, yet Pulse Marketing can also be used with other accounting systems. Pulse Marketing makes complex contract penalty/bonus calculations easy. Have a variety of invoice types and status options including quotes or interim invoices with pre-invoicing visibility to enable review and regeneration of interim/final/adjustment invoices, and user-defined invoice numbering. Invoice revisions can include accruals, provisional, and final classifications – any approval hierarchies are automatically handled. Covering every commercial complexity in resource sales and trading, Pulse Marketing is multi-currency enabled, with support for offshore invoicing through a third country; the ability to link internal/external loans, swaps, and purchases; joint venture participant purchase/sale documentation generation; agency sales, and more.

While Pulse Marketing makes people’s jobs easier in resource marketing, sales, and logistics, the optimization of supply against sales contracts is where Pulse Marketing can deliver exponential financial returns from gains and savings. Supply richer materials than sales contract specifications and you’re losing profit unnecessarily; too many impurities or too much moisture and the shipment could be rejected altogether by the receiver. With Pulse Marketing you’ll have visualized tracking of stockpiles with all available data from captured sources, including quality test certification via live integration with geotech laboratories. Pulse makes it easy for you to maximize profits from your mining and processing operations by creating the best-fit blend for each sale based on material from selected mines or from specific materials; and to match projected and available product to contract requirements. Optimize cargos considering multiple parameters such as capacity constraints, penalty/bonus, des/dem, take-or-pay contracts, what-if scenarios, etc.

With live 2-way interfaces between Pulse Marketing and any rail and shipping operators that you’re using, as mostly available around the world, you’ll have the latest information on schedules and movements drawn into Pulse for you to optimize logistics management very easily, and you’ll be able to push information through to operators from within the Pulse system directly. Talking trains, for example, you’ll enjoy viewing color-coded summaries by day, week, month, or any period to know the exact status of trains and loads in progress or forecast; click to view details; work on trains singly or in bulk with Pulse optionally assigning to forecast trains automatically.

The modern UI and graphical layouts of Pulse Marketing are visually pleasing and super-efficient for working on desktop and laptop devices, in the office, and when traveling anywhere with internet connectivity. In real life, however, resource marketing isn’t always done during business hours or from a desk. Easily upload expense receipts and submit claims on your cellphone while on the fly. With Pulse and 2FA security, whenever you find yourself negotiating the terms of a sale with a customer contact in a sushi bar somewhere, you can potentially record your quote or the heads of agreement on your phone, capture a signature if needed, and shoot it straight into the Pulse system for the next action. Pulse Digital Checklists are a system-wide tool for creating your own electronic forms. Use them to capture ad hoc sales information and for many purposes across the mining business.

The Pulse system comes loaded with every style of report ever needed by companies over many years of mining in every resource sector. Even so, there are many different styles of production and M&L reconciliations. If Pulse Marketing doesn’t offer your required format already, Pulse will configure it for you during your implementation. This is how the Pulse system continually improves and expands its capabilities for all users, by Pulse responding directly to real-world mining needs as they arise. You can also write your own reports, and customize existing reports by filtering to review, analyze, and account for every aspect of mine production and processing in summary or granular detail, optimizing the productivity of your mining operations as made possible by Pulse. And that’s just the general way of doing things when Pulse Analytics is included for next-level power and immediacy in production-related reporting. Within a fully integrated mining management system, Pulse Marketing can blend ERP data with stock and sales data to add values to other metrics.

More than 10 years ago, Pulse Analytics became the world’s first agnostic real-time mine management reporting system. Today, with Pulse-enhanced Microsoft PowerBI to present Pulse-integrated data, Pulse Analytics is even faster and easier to use. Pulse Marketing comes with prebuilt dashboards configured during implementation, and the Pulse Analytics Data Warehouse allows users to build their own BI dashboards from visual data stacks with logical assistance from Pulse Analytics rules. Supervisors and managers instantly spot trends and anomalies for rapid troubleshooting and quicker wins. Easily view variances; determine root causes and much more by drilling down from visualizations into transactional details. Users can save and share favorite reports and set reports to email automatically (eg: for meetings). Site managers may have access to their dashboards, while country managers see their sites and global sees all sites.

Pulse Marketing gives you instant situational awareness, just by landing on your Pulse Marketing system homepage at login or return. Homepages are easily personalized to include summary charts, key metrics, tasks, approvals, due dates – whatever you like to keep handy or ready for action. Managers and supervisors can get more done on the fly, with Pulse Mobility actively enabling you to review, approve/reject, and comment on all kinds of requests from any location or timezone. Access the system or Pulse Analytics securely from any browser and make fully informed decisions in critical situations without delay. The mining business is typically non-stop and your Pulse system has got your back 24/7 with active task management and the latest information.

One of the many great features of the Pulse system is the automation of workflows throughout the system. Predictive intelligence and logical assumptions make people’s jobs easier in every department – while helping to eliminate human errors and ensuring compliance with procedures and standards. The organization has no need for special workflow management software with Pulse. Pulse experts work with you to configure your preferred workflows during implementation. You’ll make your own changes easily from there. With advances in AI and machine learning incorporated into Pulse system development for the future, the organizations using Pulse are positioned to take advantage of all the promises to be fulfilled by the IoT and Industry 4.0.

While some of the world’s largest mining organizations use Pulse Production at sites as their mine production recording and reporting system, the benefits of neural networking make the deployment of Pulse Marketing within the complete Pulse ERP system most compelling. Tight integration between Pulse Production and Pulse Marketing, for example, allows delays attributable to breakdowns flowing to maintenance planners… for parts to be requisitioned from inventory or ordered online and approved for purchasing via Pulse Supply… and for payments to be raised automatically via Pulse Financials upon scan-in of goods and cross-matched purchasing validation without a keystroke. Pulse Production informs Pulse Marketing with mining and processing outputs transitioning to sales contracts, blend optimization, and delivery logistics. Analyse and manage business performance by departments, sites, countries, regions, resource sectors, ventures, or globally with corporate consolidation. Freshly captured data is shared instantly across the system, updating management information in real time.