Digital Transformation in Mining

The state of digital transformation in mining

Mining companies are collectively eyeing opportunities and tackling the challenges of digital transformation, but where they stand along the digital maturity spectrum—and what they plan to do next—can vary tremendously.

To gain insight on digital transformation in the industry—we recently surveyed and interviewed leaders in core operational, digital, and information technology (IT) roles across a set of mining organizations. Our aim was to evaluate each company’s digital maturity, identify leading practices, benchmark where they stand, and highlight opportunities to advance digital value realization. Our findings reveal both commonality and divergence in digital-related industry trends.

Six key digital transformation themes in mining

Our survey revealed six emerging themes in digital transformation that mining companies must navigate:

1. Defining and tracking digital value is key
   
   
2. Progressing on digital is hindered by a lack of strategy and communications rigor
   
   
3. Advancing on digital continues to be limited by challenging operational conditions
   
   
4. Investing deliberate and thoughtful change management is a pivotal enabler
   
   
5. Harnessing data potential as a digital leading edge
   
   
6. Advancing innovation around Generative AI (GenAI) in its early stages

Digital transformation in mining: Assessing maturity

Deloitte’s maturity assessment scores are derived across four categories:

The graphic below highlights the range of scores observed in each of the four digital maturity categories.

Continue your mining digital transformation journey

Overall, digital maturity assessment results indicate that all organizations are working on further embedding digital. Some organizations have embraced it better than others and can point to success stories. However, results also indicate that no single operator is clearly dominating in digital. There are “pockets of excellence” across mining companies but room for all organizations to continually improve. The journey is only beginning—explore more digital transformation insights in the mining industry with our full report, and take part in our digital maturity assessment in mining survey.

Special thanks to the following Deloitte Consulting LLP team members for their contributions: Beatriz Aguirre, Chikere Ogbonnaya, Nick Khater, and Shubham Singh.