Oniqua

2005 Consensus Software Awards

Product Description

Oniqua is a global leader and the only company in Australia that develops enterprise analytic solutions for supply and maintenance in asset intensive industries.  The Oniqua Enterprise Analytics Suite of solutions ‘bolt on’ to modern Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) to dynamically analyze and optimize operational transactions across inventory, procurement and maintenance saving organisations millions, while improving service levels and efficiency. 

The Oniqua products are a suite of Analytical Decision Support Systems designed specifically for asset-intensive enterprises such as:

• Mines and Primary Processors (Refineries etc)
• Oil and Gas
• Utilities
• Transport
• Defence
  and
• Government

Each product offers decision support to functional areas such as inventory management, procurement and asset maintenance.  Each product creates an accurate, consolidated High-level picture of the functional area based on:

• Actual data
• Robust cost models
  and
• Expert business logic

This high-level picture, together with features such as the ‘What-If’ scenario capability, drives better decision-making by systemizing the production of information that is relevant, meaningful and timely.

The products also provide facilities to automatically action the resulting decisions by resetting the ‘flags’ in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to change business rules.

• These products help organizations better understand their business
• Apply consistent policies throughout the enterprise
  and
• Implement on-going improvements.

They answer the following types of questions:

• What are the cost-drivers, bottlenecks and profit-drivers?
• What is the current status?
• How can we improve the current status?
• What are the expected outcomes of different strategies?
• How does the business compare with industry benchmarks? 

Oniqua products have the capability to use transactional information from a range of data sources - ERPs, Data Warehouses, market exchanges and other external data sources.

Key elements of these products are:

• Understanding the value and impact of Inventory, Procurement and Maintenance to the organisation at the detailed level;
• Importing transactional data from an external, or multiple external sources
• Transforming that data into a format suitable for analysis
• Creating Business Intelligence from that data (based on specialist industry-specific domain knowledge)
• Storing all this information in a Data Mart
• Providing analysis and reporting tools
• Exporting strategy codes and levels into the ERP system to change existant business rules (eg Inventory Optimizer exports reorder levels).

Innovation

Oniqua’s analytic suite is a revolutionary approach to optimising business costs of Asset Intensive organisations.  With more than a decade of research and development behind its products Oniqua’s solutions are at the forefront of analytic applications for asset intensive industries and continually improving keeping them leagues ahead of any potential competitor.  The suite provides the capability to analyse complex transactional data stored in corporate systems (ERPs) to deliver clients tangible business results.  Key features of Oniqua’s solutions which make it leading edge technology include:

• Creation of a separate, dedicated database (datamart) specifically for analysis and decision-making by specialist knowledge workers
• Sophisticated query, analysis and reporting
• “smart” statistical algorithms which applied to historical transactional data can forecast future demand for materials or resources, or predict the impacts of process changes using powerful ‘what if’ analysis.
• Contain ‘built in’ understanding of specific asset intensive industry issues including; remote locations, long lead times, often poor data quality.
• Contain pre-defined parameters for analysing specific sets of activities
• Integration of data from multiple corporate systems
• A dynamic feedback loop enables continual alignment of the ERP system to inventory, procurement or maintenance strategies

Oniqua forges together a number of technologies into a highly-configurable and flexible product such as:

• Dedicated Datamart: corporate data is transformed from complex transactional data into simple business models specifically for easy analysis by both processes and people.
• Active Rules: storage of corporate policies, business rules, cost models and coding systems as configurable data that can be edited by users and automatically applied across huge volumes of transaction data.
• Dynamic Segmentation: automatic application of management strategies based on segment profiles.
• Statistics Engine: facility to create a multi-dimensional database of user-defined performance measures, whose application can be controlled automatically
• Special Functions: facility to incorporate specialist algorithms whose application can be controlled automatically
• Controlled automation: the capability to automatically and consistently run Active Rules, Statistics and Special functions in any combination in order to systemize a continuous improvement process.

Oniqua has made technological advances by implementing their successful solutions with state-of-the-art algorithms and built in domain knowledge designed to address the unique inventory, procurement and maintenance needs of asset intensive industries.  The Analytics Suite of products assigns a business value to key components of information, analyses the impact of this information on the business and then forms recommendations for improvement.

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Performance

Oniqua products are designed from a user perspective.  Built on a common platform, individual views are provided for different categories of users and are optimized for their role.  A new breed of knowledge workers has emerged who use the Oniqua systems as their primary workplace tool and “window into the business”.  Oniqua’s solutions add value to the business through the development, propagation and application of corporate knowledge.  The suite of solutions have eliminated the need for companies to use manual processes, standard ERP system functionality, Access databases or spreadsheets which have all proven to be labour intensive, prone to error, or difficult to sustain on a repetitive basis.   Automation is the key to effectively managing large amounts of data, such as huge numbers of maintenance tasks and inventories and making a difference to an organisation’s bottom line.

Unlike other business intelligence tools Oniqua’s suite of analytic solutions allow a trained business analyst to create views of data without having to be skilled in programming languages. Oniqua’s solutions contain "built in" understanding of a specific business issues, pre-defined parameters for analysing specific sets of activities, and feedback information automatically into ERP systems; three key features necessary for a leading edge solution.

Oniqua products are seen as encapsulating industry leading methodologies.  The product suite includes:

• User-centric analytical tools for the whole enterprise
• Optimization engines that “tune” the performance of transactional systems
• Decision-support and expert help systems
• Dynamically-enriched content – the application of analytics to catalogues
• Data Mining applications utilizing computational intelligence
• Global scorecards which provide detailed benchmarking across a global organization

Business reporting is a key communication process within organisations.  Oniqua’s solutions generate a number of standard reports incorporating tables and charts, which can be customised, from the pools of transactional data they analyse.  Being able to present the results of analytic forecasting and ‘what if’ analysis regularly and quickly enables managers to accurately plan and achieve their targets.

Oniqua takes a proactive role in providing ongoing support through Oniqua’s remote mentoring and diagnostic service.  Oniqua has three support centres: USA, Australia and UK.  Oniqua’s Client Services and Support Desk teams implement, train and maintain our clients’ use of Oniqua’s solutions.  These teams, services and processes have retained more than 90% of customers over the past 10 years making them excellent reference sites for new customers.  Remote diagnostic, mentoring and benchmarking services allow the Oniqua support team to proactively assist end-users at minimum cost.  This complete service loop assists Oniqua in continually improving its solutions for clients and ensuring maximum return from their investment in Oniqua solutions.

Potential

Oniqua does not have any direct competitors due to the niche industry it has carefully chosen. Oniqua’s core competency is the management of specialist domain knowledge.  The company’s products are recognized as being the market leaders in their niche.  This reputation has been earned through a consistent track-record of real and quantifiable value delivery.  Our industry rivals envy our business specific knowledge and industry leading methodologies. 

Oniqua has developed a worldwide network of partners that apply, configure and implement the Oniqua solutions for their customers.  Strategic partnerships with Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERPs) developers and consultancies have allowed Oniqua to increase sales without significantly increasing resources and opens doors to existing relationships.

Specialised products and extensive partnership development have opened doors in the worldwide software market for Oniqua Enterprise Analytics. Oniqua’s niche industry was carefully chosen to avoid large competitors and attract industry partners which today include; Mincom, RMB, Axiom, AMT-Sybex, Gesix, ProcureTrade and Mincom Indoservices.  

Oniqua has many blue chip clients including Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Minera Escondida, Ok Tedi Mines, Wesfarmers CSBP Limited, Smorgon Steel, Integral Energy, Energex, and Snowy Hydro.

Oniqua is structured for growth, continuing to establish itself in the Americas (United States, Canada and South America).  In addition, Oniqua’s acquisition of Auslang International has given it a strong competitive edge.  Auslang is one of the pre-eminent, buy-side cataloguing experts in the world with extensive experience in transforming and structuring catalog data for all industry sectors.

Other information the judges should know

• Click here for a PowerPoint presentation (from the Oniqua web-site)

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Inventory Performance

Inventory Forecast

Enterprise Inventory Performance Summary

Analysis of Projected Inventory Performance Based Upon Historical Demand and Supplier Performance

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