With a "Plate to Pasture" strategy that focuses on consumers’ needs first and works back from there to deliver to them, Silver Fern Farms’ relationship with its farmer partners is all-important. Silver Fern Farms’ field-based Livestock Representatives are the key point of connection in this relationship, taking farmers’ stock booking orders and helping them to define their stock strategy. “In the past our approach to capturing information from farmers was very ad hoc, manual and paper-based,” says Andy Perry, Silver Fern Farms’ Regional Livestock Manager. “The main issue we had was that this information was stored in the Livestock Reps’ “top two inches” or in their own paper diaries. We had a complete lack of visibility and, as a result, our back office systems and processes were disconnected and delayed, dependent on the farmer sending the contract back in the post, which could take up to a week.” Silver Fern Farms needed to move from paper to tablet, creating an electronic diary and stock booking system for its 85 Livestock Representatives in their interactions with Silver Fern Farms’ 11,000 farmer partners, capturing vital information and providing it back to the business in near real-time. More details: http://www.intergen.co.nz/Our-Work/Silver-Fern-Farms-Pasture/

1. PRIMARY INDUSTRIES
case study
Greener pastures
with ‘Pasture’
SILVER FERN FARMS
A leading-edge solution
fit for the field
THE SITUATION
“Now we can go out
12 months or more
and forecast stock.
Before Pasture we
were talking one to two
weeks at the most.”
Matt Tulloch
Process Improvement Manager,
Silver Fern Farms
For leading global food company and
red meat expert Silver Fern Farms,
innovation is a critical element in
achieving the insights that help bring
about deeper relationships with
partners and business advantage in a
highly competitive market. With the
organisation’s most fundamental
transactions – between Silver Fern
Farms’ Livestock Representatives and its
farmer partners – taking place in the
field, Silver Fern Farms needed to create
a portable technology solution that
would allow vital information to be
captured, and made available to the
organisation in near real-time, around a
farmer’s kitchen table or in a paddock.
The business opportunit y:
from paper to tablet
With a Plate to Pasture strategy that
focuses on consumers’ needs first and
works back from there to deliver to
them, Silver Fern Farms’ relationship
with its farmer partners is all-important.
Silver Fern Farms’ field-based Livestock
Representatives are the key point of
connection in this relationship,
taking farmers’ stock booking orders
and helping them to define their
stock strategy.
“In the past our approach to capturing
information from farmers was very ad
hoc, manual and paper-based,” says
Andy Perry, Silver Fern Farms’ Regional
Livestock Manager. “The main issue we
had was that this information was
stored in the Livestock Reps’ “top two
inches” or in their own paper diaries.
We had a complete lack of visibility
and, as a result, our back office systems
and processes were disconnected and
delayed, dependent on the farmer
sending the contract back in the post,
which could take up to a week.”

2. Silver Fern Farms needed to move from
paper to tablet, creating an electronic
diary and stock booking system for its 85
Livestock Representatives in their
interactions with Silver Fern Farms’
20,000 farmer partners, capturing vital
information and providing it back to the
business in near real-time.
Pasture is used by the entire organisation,
giving Silver Fern Farms the timely
business information needed to make
informed decisions, such as how to
optimise and configure plants based on
the numbers of animals booked against
certain contracts – and giving the sales
team concrete business intelligence, and
the confidence to make decisions based
on real information.
The approach: a solution
fit for the field
Adoption by the sales force – Silver Fern
Farms’ Livestock Representatives – was
essential to the success of Pasture. With
an average age of 56, varying degrees of
computer literacy, willingness and
“well-worn livestock hands” navigating a
touch-based interface, the solution
needed to be user friendly, and the
approach to designing it needed to be
extremely user focused.
“We worked closely with Intergen’s user
experience designers to create a system
that would work in the field,” says
Elliot Scott, Silver Fern Farms’ Project
Manager for Pasture. “The outcome was
a solution that is really intuitive.”
With a long-standing relationship with
Intergen in place, and a strong
commitment to Microsoft technologies
across the enterprise, Silver Fern Farms
turned to Intergen to build the Pasture
application. With Windows 8 not
available at time of development,
Intergen took the Windows 7 operating
system and designed an interface that
fully embraced the tile-based Windows 8
design paradigm.
AUCKLAND
CHRISTCHURCH
“As well as adopting a user-centred
approach, another win for us was
deciding to co-locate with Intergen,
working side by side in the same
location. There is nothing like physically
being in the same place, and this was
one of the reasons for the success of
the project,” Elliot says.
The gain
With Pasture fully rolled out to
“overwhelmingly positive” feedback,
the business has one source of the truth.
A “step change” for the organisation,
Pasture gives Silver Fern Farms full
visibility and accuracy of information,
vastly improved forecasting and
reporting capabilities and the ability to
understand its business with far greater
certainty, making informed decisions
and reducing risk. As well as delivering
significant time savings in the contract
process – reducing the process from up
to a week to almost immediate access
to information – Pasture allows Silver
Fern Farms to understand its farmers
better than ever, thus strengthening
the relationship with them, enabling
more insightful and engaged
customer service.
Matt Tulloch, Silver Fern Farms’ Process
Improvement Manager, summarises the
power of Pasture by recounting a recent
experience: “The results from the field
are speaking for themselves. In fact one
of the Livestock Reps said to me the
other day: ‘I went up the drive of a chap,
created him as a supplier, signed him up
with a special programme, did his
booking and had the truck there to pick
up his animals the next day.’ It doesn’t
get better than that.”
DUNEDIN
MELBOURNE
PERTH
The Business Case
With Silver Fern Farms’ most
fundamental transactions – between
its Livestock Representatives and its
farmer partners – taking place in the
field, the organisation needed a
portable technology solution that
would allow vital information to be
captured, and made available to the
organisation in near real-time,
around a farmer’s kitchen table or
in a paddock.
The Business value
»» Visibility, accuracy and timeliness
of information, enabling greater
business knowledge and more
timely, insightful decision making
»» Strengthened knowledge of and
partnership with farmers
»» Reduction of risk
»» One source of the truth, with the
near real-time information
captured in the field used right
across the organisation
»» Greater understanding of business
performance and profitability
The Engine Room
»» Microsoft Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF)
»» Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
»» Microsoft Office Outlook offline
client, using Microsoft
synchronisation services
With Intergen staff working
across organisations of all
sizes and types, our offerings
include portals, content
and collaboration solutions,
Microsoft Dynamics financial
and relationship management,
custom software development,
management consulting
and hosting services.
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