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MINING FOR PROFITS
Another company familiar with rapid expansion is GroundProbe, a Queensland company that supplies radar-based early warning systems to global mining companies.
A spin-off from University of Queensland research projects, it has grown into a business with more than 108 staff and offices in four continents since the start of formal operations four years ago. GroundProbe’s key invention, Slope Stability Radar (SSR), allows mines to detect significant wall failures in advance of likely collapses, saving lives.
The company’s customer base stretches from Australia to Indonesia, Africa, the US and Chile.
CEO Lyle Bruce admits
managing growth has been a challenge – controlling the finances, maintaining a consistent workplace culture, focusing on staff training and communicating with a diverse team.
Bruce says: “The way around that is through good systems, good communication through the management team, and really having a clear strategy, a clear set of objectives, and making sure that’s communicated to the managers in the regions.”
GroundProbe has embraced a corporate culture that promotes innovation, fast decision-making and responsive customer service.
“The barriers (to success) are only artificial ones that we put in place,” Bruce says. “If someone else is putting a barrier there, let’s find a way under it or over it or break through it or go round.”
A case in point has been GroundProbe’s leasing model. Conscious that many mines could baulk at the cost of a new, relatively unproven technology, the management team developed a concept that allowed customers to trial the SSR system. Later, a long-term lease or sale could be negotiated.
“So we were able to overcome the hesitancy in the industry about investing into a new technology by taking away the risk,” Bruce says.
He has some advice for other business leaders. First, always respond quickly to customer needs. Second, create a culture in which people can make mistakes and learn from them. Third, do not obsess over what your rivals are doing. And fourth, understand the idiosyncrasies of different overseas markets.
GroundProbe’s focus is firmly on the future. Bruce recalls a board meeting in the business’s early days. Executives were weighing up international expansion and had a choice between maintaining the status quo and reaping some quick rewards for stakeholders or building a company that could thrive for 20 to 50 years.
“All around the table it was, yes, we want to be there for the future … we understand that’s going to cost money and the shareholders will have to wait a bit longer before they see a better return on their investment, but we’re not here just as a fly-by-night company.”
