"Where it makes good business sense to standardise, the IT Forum approves one product or technology as the BHP Billiton standard and we aim to get an enterprise price deal for the product. "Finally, where the requirement is local, the business selects the product or technology best suited to its needs, within the boundaries set by its CIO. The CSGs select and manage their own service providers for desktop, help desk, LAN, voice, process control, mine management, real-time data historian and so on." This opened up opportunities for local vendors to do business with BHP Billiton.