K2FLY : Digital Disruption and Your Social License

As published in the National Mining Chronicle Feb/Mar 2018 Edition.

In today's evolving landscape of increased community participation and increased expectations, the challenges faced by industry to maintain a 'social license to operate' have increased dramatically. Legal licenses for extractive industries (and associated taxes and royalties) are administered by government, but the social contracts with community are becoming increasingly important for successful projects. These challenges require a whole new digital perspective in managing stakeholder engagement and obtaining broad-based support for any project. Traditional customer relationship management systems (CRM), document repositories and financial systems are not equipped to handle your social engagement and legislative compliance requirements. Adding to this is the ever-increasing demand for geospatial and location intelligence to make the best sense of it all.

Digital disruption in the 'social license' value chain is happening today. Right now. Existing information silos are being broken down to deliver operational intelligence by combining disparate datasets from across the enterprise and public domain. Information silos have been a persistent issue for businesses, and although the technology sector has delivered improvements, the challenges are still significant. In this age of innovation and collaboration, when data is considered a major growth enabler, businesses need to have better ways to break down silos and utilise critical business information to their advantage. Gone are the days where CRM systems, consultation notes and meeting minutes are adequate to handle community engagement.

Firstly, we need digital solutions that can establish the legitimacy of stakeholders by mapping complex stakeholder genealogy across communities reflecting on-ground rights and recording conflicts.

Secondly, there needs to a system that associates appropriate cultural sensitivities, respect and security.

Thirdly, embedded locational intelligence in recognising legal, social and influence boundaries are all key to delivering a successful digital solution to maintain your social license.

It is time explore and invest in robust innovation, purpose-built and industry leading digital solutions that are helping companies maintain their 'social license to operate'. The resources industry needs solutions that take a holistic view of your varied stakeholders across all land operations - tenements, property, native title, cultural heritage and environment. An integrated solution will enable real-time operational intelligence for planning, access, negotiations, operations, rehabilitation and closure.

Leverage this through cloud scalability and locational intelligence to make you stand out as true and responsible corporate citizens. These solutions need to ensure that every single obligation is tracked, fulfilled with complete reporting for accountability and audit. The process starts by identifying and then aggregating these data sources, multiple stakeholders and diverse obligations into a single visualisation platform and then drive your business processes through timely alerts for action.

Sometimes the challenge is not about 'getting the message across' but 'putting together the right message'. And as always, the best time to make this change is 'right now'.

Link to article: http://info.thewest.com.au/westadvertising/feature/NMC/page28.html