How digital transformation is revolutionizing the agriculture industry
About the customer
A leading company in the agricultural industry, specialize in the nutrition and well-being of soils, plants and animals. With more than 25,000 customers, they produce and sell a complete range of fertilizers.
About the project
We were contacted to develop a technological solution focused on the collection, analysis and delivery of results of soil samples from different farms, delivering complete reports that provide guidance on the chemicals needed to improve soil quality.
What were the challenges?
Audit
The government required full traceability of the route taken by farmers on each farm and the exact location where samples were taken.
Data Exchange with Laboratories
Samples were sent to different laboratories, which returned the results in different formats (Excel, CSV, zip, email), which made data interpretation and consolidation more complex.
Manual Processes and Human Error
The client had little control over the collection of soil samples. Farmers used physical forms, filling them out by hand, which generated errors such as incomplete or illegible information. In addition, there was no record of the routes taken, causing loss of valuable information.
Offline limitations of Power Apps
As a first approach, a prototype was developed with Power Apps, but when tested in rural areas, without internet, Power Apps has limited GPS functions, failing to share the coordinates of the route taken by the farmers and providing misleading data on their geolocation, which led us to look for other alternatives.
Seasonality and Data Volume
The data collected increased significantly at certain times of the year, with more than 30,000 samples per year. As it was a manual process, there was no clear traceability of who sent the samples and from which farm they came, thus increasing the administrative workload.
Traceability
It was imperative to have the exact routes of the farmers on the farms and to know where the samples were collected from, ensuring that the agreed specifications were met.
Power Fox to the rescue!
Integration and automation
Three key integrations were performed:
- Salesforce Integration: Linked data from over 30,000 farms in real time.
- Field Migration: Migrated GeoJSON fields created from a third-party application to Dataverse.
- Lab Connections: Standardized data exchange with laboratories through APIs and standardized formats in Excel and CSV.
Creation of a Map Application in Canvas App
Developed a centralized application to create and visualize maps, consolidating information from laboratories, samples, results and audits, allowing the visualization of the route taken by the farmer when collecting samples and the chemical KPIs of each sample.
Key Functionalities
- Farm Fields: Allows the creation and management of fields, facilitating the location and collection of information.
- Sample Tracking: Visualizes farmers’ routes in real time, improving auditability.
- Sample Analysis: Displays soil chemical levels on a color scale, facilitating the identification of soil quality.
Offline Android Application
Developed an Android application connected to Dataverse with offline functionality, allowing for information collection and synchronization when a connection is available.
Security and Roles
Established security roles to ensure farmers have restricted access, allowing them to view and submit information exclusively for their designated farms.
Custom API Development for Dataverse
Developed an API Management in Azure to handle large volumes of data.
Achievements
The application created by Power Fox has become the company’s ERP, a customized system developed based on the client’s needs that drives its daily operations.
By choosing Power Fox as a partner, the agricultural company was able to transform its manual processes into an efficient and traceable digital system. The integration of mobile applications, data standardization and the implementation of offline solutions have made it possible to collect, analyze and manage soil samples accurately and efficiently.
This not only meets government audit requirements, but also significantly improves operational capacity, optimizes data collection, reduces human error and improves the quality of reports delivered to its more than 25,000 customers.