Reproduced from www.misweb.com a Fairfax publication
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Innovation Awards
(2003)
Award
Winner: Intranet/Extranet
As farming is one of the oldest trades in existence, it is perhaps surprising to be discussing the Australian farming community in terms of technological innovation. However, the 1,450 farmers who form the cooperative Dairy Farmers have recently hooked up online to Milkline, a real-time Web site enabling farmers to better monitor the milk test results of their herds and therefore produce consistently high quality milk.
The site is also viewed within Dairy Farmers as a major step in establishing a virtual farming community by enabling knowledge sharing and opening up a new avenue of communication between Australian farmers.
“It operates basically as an extranet because, as a cooperative, the farmers using the site are actually our shareholders,” says Dairy Farmers’ group information services manager, Tony Talbot.
“We saw Milkline as the ideal way of keeping a geographically dispersed group of farmers informed about company news and events as well as providing the value add of quicker test results on milk quality, as farmer payments are linked to the quality of the milk.”
The
farmers who form Dairy Farmers must provide large volumes of high-quality
milk-related products to domestic and overseas markets. The milk is tested by
Dairy Farmers’ specialists who have sophisticated techniques of capturing the
lab results and analysing these to identify trends such as volumes, temperature
and fat percentage. Milkline has been created in part to enhance the delivery of
this crucial information.
Before Milkline, farmers had to rely on the previous lab results but the real-time nature of the extranet now enables them to see earlier when there may be problems with their herds and alerts farmers to take remedial action to ensure consistent quality.
Yield
in the field
“Within Dairy Farmers we also have farm researchers who are experts in helping
farmers get the best yield possible. Milkline now gives the farmers access to
this level of expertise through the ‘Ask An Expert’ section as well as
access to a knowledge bank of research material,” says Talbot.
Talbot says choosing the right vendor was an important facet of the project’s success; a good initial design was required and the vendors needed to display the necessary imagination to understand the design and what the farmers needed. E-commerce manager, Andi Luiskandl led the relationship with vendor, Eclipse Group in order to ensure the solution met with genuine needs in the community.
They held focus groups with farmers to refine the offering and conducted a farmer survey of 1,450 farmers across the country in order to ascertain their level of interest, technical expertise and the level of their PC equipment. In certain country areas, the telecommunications bandwidth was a major consideration, so the site had to be designed to be responsive with low bandwidth while not compromising on the quantity of information on offer.
“Australians in general are high adopters of technology when they assess there is value to them. That goes right back to the pedal wireless through to VCRs, mobile phones and now the Internet,” says Talbot. “When farmers see that this is of value to them, they start using it.”
Site
test
In order to engender this interest and understanding, Dairy Farmers held
meetings where the system’s capabilities were demonstrated and also explained
it in the Dairy Farmers News magazine.
Luiskandl adds presenting and getting feedback from district chairmen was also extremely important in getting the word out into the wider community. Using farmers to test the system early in the development process ensured their peers would be comfortable using the system once it went live.
He says the farmers’ main demands were centred on simplicity and speed. This is reflected in the design of the site, which is simple with no use of flash or graphical representation as this was of no interest to the target audience.
One of the Web site’s main functions, providing reports on the quality of farmers’ milk, retains the same method of presentation as the paper-based reports used before the development of Milkline. However, the report is now interactive as farmers are able to click on certain aspects and drill down further into results. The results can then be displayed in tabular or graphical format, something that has proved a popular added functionality.
“One of the really important features of the site is the farmers have the ability to authorise other businesses such as their accountants to access their test results. This extends to financial information and is proving to be very popular with users,” says Luiskandl.
One of the central technical challenges of the project was linking the milk-testing database, known as Madcap, on a real-time XML interface to the extranet. Although Talbot says this held all the understandable concerns associated with enabling external access to previously internal systems, this is now a real strength of the system.
The authentication to the system was determined by integration with Madcap to confirm the user’s identity. Once confirmed, the farmer is given access to all of their farms without having to log out and is able to provide access to farm partners such as vets and accountants, streamlining their existing processes.
“The broad range of access is an issue to consider: farmers can be from small country towns with exchanges dating back to the 1960s and want to access the systems at all hours of the day or night because of the nature of their work. So the site has to be available for access around the clock,” says Talbot.
Although the project is now fully functional and delivering the desired benefits, Talbot says the system can still evolve.
Return on investment on the initiative has been measured in terms of uptake. Talbot is satisfied in this regard, saying the interest level has been considerable but, alongside this, the organisation’s profile and image is enhanced. The Milkline site links into Dairy Farmers’ company Web site and also to other valuable services to farmers like weather forecasts and relevant industry news.
“The farmer now has a portal into their personal farmer payments, their milk testing, industry news, Dairy Farmers News and links to other farmers in discussion forums,” says Talbot. With approximately 40 per cent of the community already using the system, Luiskandl says the take-up is an ongoing evolution.
It is still being marketed in newsletters and by word-of-mouth. The benefits for the Dairy Farmers group goes beyond the significantly improved technical services and adds potential to the growth of the group itself.
“With the information available on the site, we want all farmers to wish they were Dairy Farmer farmers,” says Talbot.
End of Article
Source: http://www.misweb.com/magarticle.asp?doc_id=22034&rgid=2&listed_months=0
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