“I love farming, but I cannot say the same about the paperwork”, Kevin Nolan, ‘Farmer of the Year’ and ‘Tillage Farmer of the Year’ Ireland, 2014. “Paperwork for my farmmanagement, customers’ requirements and compliance records is essential. When I discovered Farmflo software I was simply delighted. I spent a while setting up all my farm enterprise details online at Farmflo before downloading the smartphone app for day to day record keeping. My administration headache time is down by 90% and my records are accurate and up to date, allowing me to concentrate on my core business of farming. I’d recommend Farmflo to every farmer serious about saving time and improving their farm record keeping.” FROM PAIN TO GAIN Farming compliance made easy
KEVIN NOLAN
Adviser spoke to Farmflo’s new CEO Dan O’Donoghue about their leading edge software developed specifically with farmers in mind. Adviser: Farmflo has been getting a fair bit of coverage lately, what exactly is it? Dan: Farmflo is an easy to set up and use, cloud based, paper-less software package specifically created to improve farm management, compliance and customer traceability records. Farmflo can provide farmers and those professionals who they work in partnership with, such as agronomists, with paperless connectivity to ensure better farm management along with accuracy in compliance and traceability. Adviser: You have joined the company at an exciting time, how is the business going? We have seen fantastic growth in interest from all segments and mixed enterprises. Our aim is to make Farmflo the software of choice for the Agricultural sector, indeed one of Ireland’s leading Farmers’ Co-ops have recently selected us to replace the market leader. Recently we were appointed by Boortmalt, one of the top five malting businesses globally by volume. We now supply the software for their Irish agronomist team and they use Farmflo as their data capture tool for all their malting barley contracted growers in Ireland. Boortmalt have recently announced plans to extend their Farmflo programme into other markets which is really fantastic news.
Adviser: New technology companies can sometimes seem more about tech than people, but you have a great story. Dan: Farmflo is a story about a family farm and two brothers on different paths. One brother, Gareth, farms with his father Jim, in County Donegal on the north western seaboard of Ireland. His brother Jason is a software engineer, living in Scotland. Whilst holidaying on the family farm, Jason noticed his brother Gareth was often very restricted in his freedom to enjoy family activities and timeout due to the pain of the paper based, administrative burden involved on the mixed enterprise farm. After a number of discussions, Gareth threw down the gauntlet of challenge to his brother to write him up some easy to use software that would take the paper headache out of his farm-life and also assist in managing the farm. Jason accepted this brotherly challenge with enthusiasm and out of his efforts Farmflo software has emerged, “by farmers for farmers”. Following a tough competition, Farmflo was recently selected to join the Microsoft Accelerator Programme for three years. Adviser: Technology is always advancing, how are you dealing with this? Dan: The product has continuously improved since that initial release and the ‘whole farm’ solution for mixed enterprise is now accompanied by a suite of software including farm advisor packages for agronomists and also an integration to the excellent Xero accountancy package which means that Farmflo users can prepare their farm accounts more efficiently and accurately than ever before.
Adviser: There is a saying ‘Where focus goes, energy flows’, what’s the feedback you are getting from your clients? Dan: We have been working closely with a farmer in Ireland called Kevin Nolan. Having won ‘Farmer of the Year and ‘Tillage Farmer of the Year’ in 2014, we’re fairly confident that if he likes our product then we are doing something right. Our strapline is ‘From Pain to Gain’ as we recognised that farmers were getting bogged down in paperwork so designed Farmflo to relieve some of the pain of paperwork and administration by providing a better way for recording use of inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, agrochemicals, animal medicines and A.I. We work closely with all our users to understand what is and isn’t working and use this to continually improve our software. Scrutton Bland have recently launched an SBLive Agricultural solution incorporating Farmflo. To find out more about Farmflo visit www.farmflo.com to learn more about how the SBLive / Farmflo package can help you make your farming business more efficient call 0333 234 7144 or email info@sblive.co.uk
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