Decision to Implement Technology
When the Wards started dairy farming they used a manual system for capturing information about the six hundred cattle on the farm. This involved maintaining paper based records about health, breed and production worth for individual stock. The Fonterra processing plant also sent daily dockets with historical data on quantity of milk, district average and industry average data of other dairy farms. Compiling all these bits of information into a logical order to enable decision-making on a daily basis required a lot of duplication. In order to increase efficiency, the Wards searched for packages that would allow integration of all the separate bits of information. They had a good idea of what functionality the packages needed to have from Thomas's prior experience in the industry and by talking to friends and family.
With an investment of approximately $2,000 they acquired software packages that enabled management of the cashbook, stock health and pasture. Traditionally accountants use software packages such as the Concept Cash Manager™ package, DairyWin™ and All-About-Grass™ to prepare annual reports for farmers and sharemilkers. Acquiring these same packages allowed the Wards to prepare their own accounts and use their accountant only to audit the records for tax purposes hence saving approximately $1,500 per annum.
The Wards purchased DairyWin™ software from LIC, which captures information about each individual animal. All-About-Grass™ is a mapping program that provides historical data and enables planning of stock movement. It captures other details like the impact of fertilisers and weather patterns on pasture. Concept Cash Manager™ is a financial package that is used to maintain accounts. All packages are off-the-shelf applications that are designed specifically for farming operations in New Zealand.
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