RG Gold accelerates budgeting and unearths new financial insights

RG Gold operates two mines in Kazakhstan that are estimated to hold six million ounces of gold worth tens of billions of dollars. Transforming an earthbound gold deposit into a successful mine can take up to a decade, and early decisions can impact profitability for years to come, so mining businesses create sophisticated budgets and forecasts. When RG Gold built a new Mining and Metallurgical Complex (MMC) in 2022, the company’s production capacity quadrupled — but already-strained financial workflows felt additional stress.

“Coordinating with 15 different departments and creating budgets using multiple spreadsheets was time-consuming and error-prone,” says RG Gold’s Head of Financial Analytical Department Yelzhas Suleimenov. “Our manual process made it hard for teams across the business to collaborate and communicate. Data consolidation and checking calculations for accuracy took up valuable time that could be spent on high-value forecasting.”

Forging a valuable partnership

The RG Gold team turned to industry peers for advice on how to refine processes to enable expansion. “Leaders at another mining company in Kazakhstan — one that uses the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as us — were using Anaplan successfully for high-level financial modeling and forecasting,” explains RG Gold CFO Marat Shaimardanov. “So we decided to go the same route: Beef up our ERP and integrate it with Anaplan.”

To ensure a successful implementation, the RG Gold team enlisted Anaplan partner ValueMont. ValueMont worked closely with RG Gold’s finance team to build comprehensive budgeting and financial models in Anaplan that automatically ingest key ERP data.

“Working with ValueMont was a great experience,” Shaimardanov says. “They understood our business and our industry, and went the extra mile to help us set up robust processes and achieve rapid implementation, with almost no disruption to our daily operations.”

Faster budgets with nuggets of insight

With Anaplan, RG Gold’s finance team has reduced annual budget time by a month. “We’ve accelerated budgeting and achieved 95% accuracy in our budgets,” explains Shaimardanov. “We’re pleased with these results, and aim to enhance efficiency even further by moving to a monthly budgeting cycle.”

Budgeting with Anaplan has helped RG Gold enhance communication and collaboration between departments. “Using Anaplan, we can gather complex data from various sources and consolidate it on one unified platform,” says Suleimenov. “It’s easy to conduct data analysis and create a forecast now. And the reporting process and the engagement between the teams and departments is better.”

The pricing analytical tool built in Anaplan has unlocked insights about spending. “We learned that approximately 50 of our budget items make up 98% of our annual costs,” explains Shaimardanov. This is an example of the valuable analysis that’s possible with the new solution. “There’s more time to do smart analytics month-to-month using Anaplan,” Shaimardanov explains. “It’s easier to track progress and deviations, and to re-analyze procurement, logistics, and planning. All of that is coming together, and Anaplan definitely plays a crucial role in making sure we are competitive.”