5 Key Advantages of Digitizing Your Farm Records

As hand-written notes and conventional spreadsheets become a thing of the past, digital record keeping is becoming a mainstay, even in agriculture. Farm management systems (FMS) and apps are taking on much of the heavy lifting of record keeping making your experience more seamless. By embracing digitalization on your farm, your information and data are conveniently stored and can be instantly shared at the click of a button on the device of your choice, to the team members of your choice. It’s time to put down the pen and use an FMS to save time, increase accuracy for planning, make timely decisions and streamline relationships. Start managing your farm the way you’ve always wanted.

Let’s look at some key advantages digitizing your farm records brings:

1. Improve collaboration between farm team

When everyone on your farm team has access to all on-goings, collaboration improves significantly. With the click of a button your team, including your trusted partners, can share and communicate activities within your operation. The ability to connect with your partners and/or link different information sources will strengthen your relationships.

Concerned about privacy around your information? Digitization requires top-notch security and a good FMS would consider the use of permission-based sharing. With the right FMS, you can set up custom permission settings and alerts to allow for the flow of information between the team of your choice.

2. Provide timely decisions

In critical seasons where there’s never enough time, having access to current farm records right at your fingertips will help you act quickly and with confidence in real-time. Furthermore, by having your historical information also on hand means you can easily reference your records for future planning. More importantly, the digital transfer of information works both ways so in addition to providing your farm team information, you’ll also receive recommendations from your trusted advisors through the FMS or app. Any action you require to take place throughout the season is at your fingertips, whether it be communicating with operators, manager, scouts, or even your independent agronomist.

3. Have an accurate picture of your farm

Digital record management means you now have constant, up-to-date knowledge around all the moving parts of your operation. Features like auto-capture relay information like field weather and growth stage back to you to help with in-season decisions. You can generate reports on seeded acres, applications and products, and efficiently track movement of inventory. Schedule and assign tasks to your team instantly so everyone knows what’s happening at all times without having to stop what you are doing.

Concerned about connectivity on farm to ensure proper communication between the team? It’s important to explore FMS’s that successfully leverage offline capabilities.

4. Improved access to information

Acting as a central hub for your operation, digitized records are accessible and sharable from virtually anywhere within your team. Share the broader farm plan with your team or specific details with your partners. The right FMS can improve operational functions while keeping information secure and confidential. Eliminate time consumed by searching for paperwork of your farm’s historical records – they are now kept safe for the future.

5. Saving hours back in administration time

We all know time is money and incorporating an FMS for your farm records can save you time and manpower hours. Where you may have previously spent many late nights performing traditional record keeping tasks, automized features within an FMS can give you the time back you need.

WHICH SYSTEM IS RIGHT FOR YOUR FARM?

Seeing the benefits to adopting an FMS for farm record keeping is easy. Deciding which one suits the needs of your individual operation may be a bit overwhelming. As you are increasingly faced with a vast selection of digital tools, you should consider a complete solution that acts as a central hub to deliver accurate information at your fingertips to improve your overall productivity, but also keeps disruptions to daily operations and workflows to a minimum.

So, how do you select and integrate the best FMS for your record keeping needs? Let’s look at some of the things a complete FMS should provide:

• Collaboration – to improve overall performance. This would include things like connectivity with the whole team for more efficient people management, the ability to see crop plans, a way to keep track of inventory, and manage equipment records; even offline.
• Integration – to automate data collect. The platform should have numerous connections with sensors, hardware, and other software. The more API’s that the FMS has, the less data you will have to enter and the more powerful the FMS will be for the farm.
• Service Providers – to allow the integration of trusted third-party service providers and their software. The platform should work with current, trusted service providers while enabling those service providers to be more efficient in the delivery of the services on the farm.
• Security – strict guidelines for data security and privacy should be important to every member of your team, including your FMS provider. The use of permission-based settings and alerts should be a top feature incorporated into a good FMS or app. You should be confident your data is in good hands.
• Data Ownership – uncertainty around data ownership probably makes you wary about which company to work with. A high-quality, efficient FMS will communicate who owns the data and what ownership really means. Some platforms even revenue share with farms that opt to participate.
• Empower the Farm – you know your land the best and the FMS will act as a central hub for your operation making digitized records accessible.
• Independence – you want independent advice that is in your best interest and not connected to the sale of other products.
• Training – things are busy. That’s not going to change. By building a strong team around you to bring new ideas, expertise and tools like tools for record keeping will make decision making easier and impactful.

Ready to integrate a farm management solution to help with farm record keeping on your operation? Let’s get to work. Together. Check out our website (www.decisivefarming.com) or contact your local Decisive Farming representative.