Third, any software being used in this industry must support the continual assessment of the mining operations' impact on the environment and community from a social standpoint. Fourth, the software must have support for maintenance schedules to keep complex and expensive mining equipment maintained and in good repair. Fifth, the design of the software needs to include support for long business cycles and the costs associated with exploration and initially creating a new operation (Hulten, Bjorkstrand, 2009). Conclusion

Based on these business requirements, mining software needs to be able to deliver a shared repository of information about the entire mining operation that is real-time in terms of performance. Often mining operations span multiple...

For many of them, the need for having a very accurate measure of costs in real-time can often determine how quickly they will be able to grow and capitalize on ore prices. This real-time analysis is critical for those mining and exploration companies that are working in precious metal mining where the spot prices of ore can change the Return on investment (ROI) of projects very quickly. The use of real-time analytics is also critical for determining the mix of ore over time.
References

Hulten, P., & Bjorkstrand, H.. (2009). A Case Study of the Development of an E-service for the Swedish Mining Industry. Services Marketing Quarterly, 30(1), 18.