AgRecord was formed in 2012 by Ginny Neal, a former school principal and wife of Stu, who is Castlepoint Station farm manager and winner of the 2012 Wairarapa Sheep and Beef Business of the Year award.
Neal’s software Cloud Farmer addresses inefficiencies she identified in their business and it allows better allocation of farm staff and resources. She had also seen scope for more consistency in information given to and required from staff, and better access to historical records and information held in filing cabinets or notebooks.
AgRecord in its first year helped mostly go-ahead owners of large stations to develop software tailored to their needs.
The firm’s first program, called Team Talk, took about 30 hours to custom build for each client. Now, Bunny says, the company is releasing Cloud Farmer, a plug-and-play program based on the Team Talk architecture.
It has many of the features needed to manage a farming business – weekly planner, jobs list, calendar, stock records, space to upload printable farm maps, and best practice and health and safety documentation.
But it differs from other management software, Bunny says. Many such programs are intended for farm owners and store their commercially sensitive data. Cloud Farmer differs in being accessible to almost anybody involved in a farm business.
Owners can add workers, consultants and even service providers as users of the system, while keeping full control of what they can see.
“It gives everybody a chance to get involved in the running of the farm. Farm workers feel like they play more of a part in the farm.”
Farmers are now testing the software. Some have warmed particularly to the diary, she says.
Workers are allocated a colour to use when making entries, allowing all to see who has written what, but without jobs being allocated specifically in the weekly planner. Instead a ‘job list’ column records who is allocated what job.
Record keeping (e.g. stock records, chemical inventory, health and safety register) automatically populates with the initials of the person who entered the data. “The diary is where we see this; staff almost compete with each other on who has done the most in a day. This is good. Once they write in the diary it prompts them to do things like update the chemical register or jobs list.”
Though Cloud Farming is plug-and-ply it can be customized. For example, with users can change the appearance of the program and add extra tables and pages as needed. “Some people like to record feed covers or soil moisture or any number of things.”
AgRecord hopes to work with third party providers to supply other plug-in modules farmers could use, Bunny says. “I’m a stick-to-my-knitting girl, so we’ll stick to the basics we know we can do well and look for people who are specialists to develop modules.”
Apple iOS and Android apps are both ‘in the works’.
Website visitors can sign for a free one-month trial on their website. Buying in costs a one-off fee of $1500 for the system and a tiered monthly subscription starting at $50/month for regular system updates, support and data maintenance
Tel. 06 855 5378
www.agrecord.co.nz
