CRM and ordering platform for the agriculture industry

The goal of our client was to pioneer the agricultural software consulting market and build a robust and flexible software for agriculture that would allow them to bring farming goods search, comparison and purchase experience to the next level. They sought the state-of-the-art CRM for agriculture, equally beneficial and efficient for farmers, agronomists, traders, and distributors. The system was requested to provide immediate recommendations, suggest best value options, and allow fast online ordering with flexible yet compelling discount and motivation policies.

After a series of thorough exploratory sessions, we got a good understanding of agtech software companies' business processes in general and of our client's current pain points, and how to turn them into a key advantage for their business growth as well as for their partners and customers' benefit.

Building an agtech solution for guidance in choosing and buying the best suitable fertilizers and chemicals required a great deal of specialized knowledge, which we gained through consultations with agricultural experts. In order to effectively implement new technologies in agriculture, we needed to speak the same language with farmers and agronomists, immerse ourselves in the nuances of the industry, and understand its terminology, needs and specifics.

The Salesforce solution we proposed was aimed at achieving the following goals:

• Simplifying the process of finding needed products for farmers - With an easy-to-maintain database that contains information about all products with their ingredients and substitutes; products' usage instructions and consumption levels; crops and their needs during their lifecycle; diseases and chemicals that fight them.
• Providing real-time quote generation - With a sophisticated order process implemented directly in Salesforce that matches farmers' needs with best price offers from various manufacturers and distributors; takes into account more than 20 factors that are reflected in discounts for an end customer and bonuses for a salesperson; provides full transparency about payment terms and significant order terms.
• Reducing qualification requirements for employees - By embedding most of the knowledge of experienced agronomists and consultants into the Salesforce solution, this knowledge is applied automatically by the means of automated actions, complex calculations, helpful suggestions, and safe data validations.
• Reducing maintenance expenses - By implementing all business logic automation and calculations in a highly-configurable way that allows regular Salesforce users to create new discount policies and promotions; to adjust all relations between products, crops, diseases, etc.; to update the general knowledgebase and all information about products, etc.;
• Supporting continued growth - By building the foundation for digitalization of other areas of the business, including the creation of online portals for farmers and distributors; development of a flexible API for a mobile application for farmers; and integrating with ERP and supplier systems;

The developed solution is an agtech software frontrunner, significantly reduces the amount of work and time needed to consult each customer while providing best-value propositions and full transparency for farmers, partners, and our customers' business. New capabilities in real-time consulting gave our customer a great market advantage and improved their already high service quality even more. Gained transparency allows for better reporting and forecasting as well as for adding new technology-driven features with an easy-to-expand platform.

We keep working with the customer on extending the solution and bringing new capabilities to their employees and customers.