Diesh chose the Citrix solution not only because he did not have to spend huge sums of money implementing it or Web-enabling his legacy applications, but because Indonesia is communications challenged. "Citrix has a low bandwidth requirement: a 30 kbps dial-up speed from all cities in Indonesia using either a standard dial-up from AT&T or the local provider Indosat for access to our entire suite of applications and files."

As many users weren't tech savvy when the portal was deployed, Diesh mandated each one to attend a 30-minute training class prior to using the system. Most of the training was focused on using RSA authentication codes and dial-up connections on the go. The rest of the usage - clicking on icons to get to the applications - was straightforward.

Portals connect suppliers

Newmont Indonesia did not only focus on improving internal efficiency with its portal, it is using portals to increase supplier efficiency. Diesh claims his is the first company among his competitors in Indonesia to provide its suppliers secure access to its internal systems. For instance, PT Trakindo Utama, Newmont's Caterpillar alliance partner, was given access to the Dispatch System so they could monitor if a particular piece of equipment was breaking down in the pit. Providing this information through a portal, Diesh says, helps Newmont Indonesia to improve the utilisation of its fleet of 68haul trucks. "With access to this system, Trakindo is able to view the real-time status of each truck, such as whether there is an equipment failure and if so, which system has failed. If they see a truck having a problem, they can rapidly despatch someone to fix it. This helps us improve the availability of these million-dollar assets [each truck costs about US$1.8 million]," says Diesh.

At this moment, it has also given another one of its vendor partners, freight forwarder Kuehne & Nagel, access to its MIMS ERP system. "This provides them the capability of updating the status of any particular freight order, in real time, as it moves through our supply chain." That, according to Diesh, reduces inventory costs through just-in-time supply chain management. Another vendor partner he has given access through his portal is Modular Mining Systems, which utilises operations schedules via its portal to support its mining pool. "Modular can log on to various systems in the mine to provide support. If there is a problem in the mine, they can access the system via the portal, look at what is going on real time, and establish a way to fix the problem. Providing them access to our mining applications encourages greater collaboration, smoothening and accelerating our operations processes."

Diesh says a portal will not help his company capture more business from customers - essentially smelting companies that buy its metal products - because the metals industry is a commodity market. The company's focus remains on increasing profitability through lowering costs. And using a portal to link up with suppliers allows him to do that because if he had gone for another solution, such as VPN, he says, he would have had to spend US$5,000 to US$10,000 to implement a firewall solution for each vendor partner, and it would also have been administratively burdening on his staff. "On the other hand, a portal not only allowed us to quickly bring up vendor partners but would also be able to accommodate changes in vendor partner requirements, which include adding new applications on the fly," he says.