LV Podcast_LaurenWalsh_CitiPacificMining 0:00 Hello, I'm Robert Holland, and this is the SAP Insider Las Vegas 2025 podcast. 0:06 Thank you for listening as we speak with SAP insiders and industry experts about their experiences in the SAP space. 0:13 In this episode, I'm speaking with Lauren Walsh of City Pacific Mining. 0:19 Lauren, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role. 0:22 Hello, nice to be here. 0:25 I'm the Superintendent of Learning Systems at CITIC Pacific Mining. 0:29 My role there is kind of threefold. 0:32 Firstly, I look after contractor mobilization from a systems perspective, so making sure all our vendors can meet our mobilization ready requirements. 0:40 Secondly, I oversee day-to-day management of our SuccessFactors module, which is really critical in our organization as it integrates with a lot of our important other systems like our gate access software and our travel and accommodation software. 0:55 And lastly, I manage business improvement projects around workforce readiness like the ones I'll be talking about here in Vegas that focus on improving efficiency around workforce compliance. 1:08 Unfortunately, these aren't live podcasts, but I would very much encourage anyone who is listening to this podcast after the event to check out Lauren Sessions and download and and take a look at them because they're bound to be very interesting. 1:22 So you talk about the fact that you use SuccessFactors. 1:25 You talk about you're, you're in charge of learning systems. 1:28 What, what's your background with SAP and what does the SAP landscape look like at City Pacific? 1:36 I've been working with specifically SuccessFactors module for about 10 years in the resources industry, which is obviously you would know the pro dominant industry in WA. 1:46 At City Pacific Mining, SAP plays a critical role in our business operations. 1:51 We use it for SAP for procurement, finance and management and HR and Concur and these are all on premise solutions. 2:00 And on the cloud side, obviously we use SuccessFactors for workforce compliance training and learning management. 2:06 And we also have SAP business technology platform, which powers our training applications and SA PS identity authentication services, which is how our users log into our SuccessFactors modules. 2:19 And then in looking ahead for us, we've just been through the discovery phase over the last six months to a year looking to implement S for Hannah and EC and ECP. 2:29 So if that gets approved, we'll be looking to implement that in the next half of the year on premise or cloud cloud like Rise with SAP or I don't know that I'm not sure on the Hannah side, I'll be on the EC ECP side. 2:44 OK, all right, fair enough. 2:47 So what was the last major enterprise deployment that you did at City Pacific Mining and, and did it hit the goals that were defined for it? 2:56 And what did you sort of learn from the experience? 2:59 I mean, obviously from your perspective as yes, yeah, from from my perspective, I'll just talk about my, the two projects that I rolled out specifically that we're going to be talking about over the next couple of days. 3:11 So for me, it was our infield assessment app and our compliance document app and the IT was a kind of A2 phase journey. 3:19 The first phase really focused on how we interact with our workers prior them to the mobilizing to the site and how did we address those challenges. 3:26 And that's how we came up with the compliance document app built on BTP. 3:30 And then the second phase focused on OK, once our workers get to the site, how do we assess and verify competency in the field. 3:35 And that's the second project that I'll be talking about over the next couple of days. 3:38 So those two apps built on BTP with gallery solutions are what I'll be what the late with the latest roll outs that I did. 3:47 Yeah, OK. 3:48 And did they meet the goals that you had for them? 3:52 Absolutely. 3:53 In terms of where they fit for purpose? 3:55 Absolutely. 3:57 What I talk about in one of my sessions is how we were able to not only improve efficiency and workforce readiness, but our increase in compliance through the CDA app was just incredible for our organization, which allows our leaders to have such more more oversight and insight into workforce readiness easily at the drop of a hat. 4:17 And with our infield assessment app, it's been able to give a full digital toolbox to our on site trainers and assessors, which has obviously improved efficiency and made a paper based process fully digital. 4:30 So maybe something that we we should ask is just what's the importance of workforce readiness when it comes to City Pacific mining because this sort of drives your entire experience with SAP. 4:47 Yeah, absolutely. 4:48 So ready obviously readiness obviously means something to each different organization. 4:53 For us it's about getting our workers on the tools faster because we have a very heavy with about a 6040 split of contractors and employees, but 60% contractors and we're paying for their time and also we know there is deadlines to meet on production and things. 5:09 So getting people working faster is obviously always the goal and bottlenecks and delays due to paperwork and compliance things is just something that, you know, we shouldn't have to be dealing with in 2025. 5:25 So that's why it's, it's an important thing for us. 5:28 And obviously around workforce compliance and safety and such a heavily regulated industry like ours where in Australia where you're constantly having to prove that you have done everything that you can to successfully to to make sure you mitigate the risk around workplace health and safety. 5:43 It's why it's important for us. 5:45 Yeah. 5:45 No, so it's it's very important to the business as a whole. 5:48 Absolutely, yeah, it's crucial. 5:50 Yeah, it's crucial. 5:51 It's critical, yeah. 5:52 So you talked about the two apps that you just rolled out. 5:57 What are sort of your top priorities for enterprise software and services over the next 12 to 24 months? 6:04 I think that we for us, I will speak high level for our organization, it'll be dependent I think upon what happens with our business case. 6:11 If that gets approved, then there'll be a lot of resources put into into that roll out of both Hannah and ECEC and ECP. 6:19 So that's a lot of work to be done over the next 12 to 24 months. 6:23 And with that approval that will really shape what's going to happen in our business. 6:27 And then they'll obviously be a lot of upscaling involved for our HR team who've been used to it using an on premise solution. 6:33 So we'll our focus will be on supporting them through the transition from my, my focus will be on that. 6:40 Just a little thing. 6:40 Yeah, just a little bit. 6:41 Yeah, little thing to do there. 6:43 So I mean, you didn't talk about, you talked about rolling out those new applications, not necessarily SuccessFactors, but it sounds like there's going to be a transition from your existing on premise HR systems to success to SuccessFactors as well. 6:56 That's right. 6:57 Yep, that's correct. 6:58 So it'll be a fully cloud based HR core system, right? 7:02 Yeah, obviously a big change, a big change for our HR. 7:05 Not a big change for me because obviously I'm used to using SuccessFactors, but it will be a big change for our organization, just for our HR team. 7:12 Our end users are used to using SuccessFactors and our apps are an extension of SuccessFactors. 7:17 So they're able to log in using the same credentials and they have user faces that they used to to seeing all the time. 7:24 Yeah. 7:24 And that's important, I think, because you know, one of the things one of our previous podcast speakers talked about the factors here, users don't really no what's on the back end. 7:34 They just need to be able to do their job, needs to be user friendly and efficient for them. 7:39 Absolutely. 7:40 And that's what's great about our apps. 7:41 And what I talk about in my sessions is how we've been able to give them the tools that they're just used to using in their personal lives. 7:47 So we're all used to uploading photos from our mobile phone for banking apps and other transactions like that. 7:53 And that's all we've done is made it a simple an app for them to use that is not, not something have to focus on the technology. 8:00 They can just focus on their jobs and getting taking accountability for their compliance. 8:04 Yeah, yeah. 8:04 You're used to taking a photograph of a a chair. 8:07 Take a photo is so simple. 8:08 Whatever for our worker with our CDA app, our compliance document app, it's so simple for them. 8:14 They simply just take a photo of the license and then hit submit for them. 8:20 That's all they need to do. 8:22 And then, you know, it moves into the admin workflow and from there it's just a quick verification, which is just so much more efficient than our manual process that we traditionally have in place. 8:31 Yeah, it sounds like it streamlines things. 8:32 It's completely streamlined things, yeah. 8:34 And from a security perspective as well, it really helps us to be able to eliminate the kind, the amount of access that we give out to our success factor system, which is obviously in this environment and always a good thing. 8:47 Yeah. 8:48 So it's a bit of a broad question, but what are your, you know, longer term strategic goals that you have from a, a people and a process and a systems and A and a data perspective and, and how are you looking to get there? 9:06 For me, I'll just talk about my own area, my, my goals this year for 2025. 9:12 Well, firstly, like I said, depends on what's going on in our business. 9:14 But for me personally and within my own team and within my own business area it the focus is on improving efficiencies and automation when we can. 9:22 So in addition to these, you know, I talked about the two phase journey, the apps were part of that, but there's also been some additional work, integration work that's going on between SuccessFactors and some of our other systems. 9:31 So my focus will be continuing to do that. 9:33 And as you know, when you come to these conferences, technology evolves so much and we have tools in our business now that we didn't have last year that make these kind of things possible that we couldn't do before. 9:42 Simple things like Microsoft Teams, forms that incorporate workflows, things like that. 9:47 So there's a lot of, you know, high volume forms that we use that we're going to be transitioning and things like that. 9:52 So just continuing to focus on how can we automate a lot of these mundane tasks and make things as streamlined as possible, Although, you know, the technology is both it it, it potentially adds a huge amount of value that you haven't been able to do before, but it's also challenging in the sense that, well, you're not necessarily using that technology yet. 10:16 And integrating that technology isn't always the most straightforward thing. 10:20 Absolutely not. 10:21 And a little about relationships as well. 10:23 So what we we didn't have the skill set in house a lot on in our IT team to do a lot of these things, but we do now, which is great. 10:29 They've you know, they've got all these resources and and integration teams and and things like that. 10:34 So they oops, sorry, we're kicking each other. 10:41 Yeah, the the technology is great. 10:44 But yeah, you do have to obstacle as well. 10:46 What's great about, you know, the use of AI in the apps that we currently have and the OCR technologies all happens in the background. 10:52 It's not like a, not like the end user or even my team have to be able to, to utilize any of that. 10:58 It's all just kind of it's happening in the background for us. 11:01 Yeah, yeah, the the systems are getting put in place for you to utilize. 11:04 Yeah, absolutely. 11:06 Yeah. 11:06 But you're right. 11:07 Yeah, upscaling people in their technology is obviously a hard thing, but if you make it as simple as possible, then not too much work has to go into it. 11:15 Building relationships with your IS team is obviously a key to key point too. 11:18 But I think I think that's a that's an important point that you you have because you're coming at this, you're from the business side. 11:24 Yes, I am right, Workforce compliance and you're working with your IT teams to make things possible. 11:32 And I think that, you know, that interaction between those two teams, because a lot of the people we speak with coming to these conferences, I mean, a lot of SAP implementations are driven from the IT side. 11:43 That's right. 11:44 But if you don't have the business teams involved, Yep, the systems are not going to exist that people want to use. 11:51 Yeah. 11:51 And I think that's probably a lessons learned for our organization. 11:54 In a lot of ways, the business areas do drive a lot of their own implementations and it's certainly been the case in my area. 12:01 But I think we're looking to change that. 12:04 Like I certainly have a great relationship with our IT team now and they've helped out on a number of amazing projects that we've been able to deliver and we wouldn't have been able to deliver them without them this year. 12:13 So they really have the expertise that we need. 12:16 And then we've got the business knowledge and the the ideas that we want to implement. 12:19 Yeah, no, that, that's super important. 12:22 So I mean, obviously you talked about, you know, having working on workforce compliance readiness. 12:28 What lessons have you learned from the experiences you've had in that role, particularly, you know, as it comes to working with SAP technologies? 12:38 I think, well, when you're any lessons learned, I think it's about not just about the technology or rolling out something new. 12:45 It's really you're trying to shift a culture change. 12:47 That's the the hard part and how people engage with M processors. 12:53 So for us, you know, with our work as being able to take more accountability for their compliance and then us being able to like, because we then actually have the data and can present it and to let our leaders make more decisions. 13:06 It's, it's really, we have to understand that the system's not going to drive compliance. 13:11 It's the culture that's going to drive the compliance change. 13:13 And now, you know, leaders now have good visibility, so they can then have make more informed decisions and really drive that in their own operational areas. 13:21 And it's about really for us about creating pathways for workforce readiness as well. 13:25 Those pathways didn't exist before. 13:27 But with the compliance, like how do we expect people to be compliant if the, the, the previous processes were so hard, you know, got all these emails going back and forth and you know, workers providing things to their employers, employees sending them to us. 13:39 And so there's lots of that back and forth is eliminated and it's super easy now. 13:43 They can take accountability for it. 13:45 And we give them the pathways and the tools to be able to be work, be ready faster, be ready faster. 13:51 Yeah, exactly. 13:52 No, that. 13:53 And I think that's important because without the buy in, you know, you can't just push this through. 14:01 You've got to have that. 14:03 And I'm mentally blanking on the word you just used, but you've got to have that culture. 14:06 Yeah, absolutely. 14:08 Yeah. 14:08 And empower them to to take more ownership over it. 14:11 So it just becomes part of their daily operations as a part as aside from like a being an administrative burden. 14:16 Yeah. 14:17 Yeah, I say in my presentations it becomes proactive rather than reactive. 14:21 Yeah, no, absolutely. 14:22 And I can very much see that. 14:23 Yeah. 14:24 So you know, I've only got a couple minutes left here. 14:29 What's a piece of advice that you would offer regarding accelerating workforce readiness? 14:36 I think understanding your business needs first and foremost because readiness obviously means something different to every organization, whether that is around, is it efficiency that they're trying to improve? 14:47 Is it leadership capability they're trying to improve? 14:50 Is it safety compliance, Lots of different means, lots of different things. 14:54 I would say you can. 15:01 We can pause and we can. 15:02 I forgot the question. 15:06 Who said what would I? 15:07 Oh, advice, advice, advice free. 15:09 Let me let me take that from the top again. 15:11 We can edit out this little bit in the middle here. 15:13 Yeah, that's not a problem. 15:14 This is why it's a recorded podcast and it's not we're not streaming live to the Internet or anything like that. 15:18 So. 15:19 OK, Yeah. 15:20 So what advice? 15:20 So, yeah, let me, I'll ask the question and then you can answer it. 15:23 What's a piece of advice that you would offer regarding accelerating workforce readiness? 15:27 OK, Yeah. 15:28 I would start with a clear goal in mind around what does ready mean for you? 15:33 What does workforce readiness mean for your organization? 15:35 You know, for us that means getting on the tools faster. 15:39 For you it might mean safety, compliance or operational efficiency or even leadership capabilities. 15:43 So you define what that means and then design your systems and training programs around that. 15:49 And also you really need to understand your business challenges like what what are your executives actual issues in the in the organization and how can you make efficiencies around that and what are your bottlenecks. 16:01 One of the great things we did with SAP when we were implementing ours was use their app house design methodology and that really goes into the human centric approach to design. 16:10 Then it helps you flush out those inefficiencies by mapping the current processes and doing those user stories so that you can engage with everybody that's involved in the process. 16:18 So I'd highly recommend that if you have ASAP Partner like we did with Delray, they helped us through that process. 16:24 Great. 16:25 One last question, what benefits do you get from coming to a conference or an event like this at SAP Insider and what would make it even more valuable for you? 16:37 I think one of my biggest takeaways is you learn something new every every time. 16:42 So yes, you need to understand your business challenges. 16:44 You need to understand what your executive risks are. 16:46 You also need to understand what what technology is out there, even though you're not the technical expert yourself necessarily, maybe some of you are, but you need to understand, OK, well, these are the challenges, how can I close these gaps? 16:58 And that's where the, the, these conferences come in really handy. 17:02 Also, you know, networking obviously is an important part of it and just meeting other people in the industry. 17:10 And one thing that the I've never been to the insider event, so I'm really excited to be here. 17:15 But one thing that mastering SAP in Australia and New Zealand does really well is sharing the customer user stories. 17:21 So it's always great to hear what other customers are doing in their innovation space. 17:24 And you think, Oh my gosh, didn't know you could do that. 17:26 Yeah. 17:27 So that's always really helpful. 17:29 That's great. 17:30 This is a little like mastering SAP four or five times the size. 17:34 OK. 17:35 Yeah, I can see that already. 17:38 It's quite overwhelming. 17:39 Yeah. 17:40 It's a bigger event. 17:41 Lauren, thank you so much for speaking to the SAP Insider community today. 17:45 It has been fantastic to have you. 17:46 I appreciate your time. 17:48 Thank you so much. 17:48 This was really fun. 17:49 Yeah. 17:50 You're welcome.