Innovative agribusiness management system

The level of agribusiness is decreasing. To maintain competitiveness in the market, it is necessary to increase the efficiency of use of land banks, machinery, and parts. And it is impossible without planning, control, and accounting of the whole chain of production processes. AgriChain’s solution enables these tasks to be accomplished.

for a long time, Ukrainian agribusiness was engaged only in expanding the land bank, which was not accompanied by improved technologies or improved management of farms. This led to the emergence of unique conditions: In Ukraine, there were enterprises with large land banks, which accounted for areas and fields on paper cards, did not plan production programs, did not conduct warehouse records on cards, and practically did not control expenses of fixed resources, The post-fact analysis analyzed the cost of production and main indicators of efficiency. the necessity of the diversification of agricultural businesses has been tried to simplify the work of departments and services. But these were the simplest solutions – for example, excel spreadsheets. More advanced companies used 1C for the accounting department, telemetry modules for control of dispatch services, and control of equipment use. Small and medium enterprises, as a rule, stopped at this stage. Large agro holdings needed to dejuitalize business processes, and automate planning and management processes. They continued integration of it-technologies into all spheres of enterprise activity.

Different departments of the same enterprise could use different external solutions. This led to problems with limited, narrow-focus functionality, data reception/transmission, solution integration, and operational management reporting. This situation caused delays in work, decision-making and, as a result, additional financial costs.

In “Astarta-Kyiv” also appeared a problem. Therefore, the managers of the agricultural holding, Viktor Ivanchyk, and Viktor Gladkiy, decided to create a software product that would fully meet all the needs of the company. To achieve this goal, AgriChain’s own in-house company was created.

AgriChain is the only information portal for agribusiness management.
Two years have passed since creating the system, and its improvement is still in progress. The development was transformed from one software product into a “single information portal on agribusiness management”.

The multi-module platform combines solutions that optimize the work of certain areas of the enterprise: Landbank management, production, monitoring of crops, storage, procurement and supplies, Equipment and repairs, and logistics of parts and finished products. However, the product covers not only the company’s own needs but also the needs of other industry participants.

Such work cannot be done without the financial and human resources of a large company. The final decision should be conceptually correct, thought out in detail, and working, and the approach should be systematic. At development, the ideas and experience of both own experts who are experts in the field and other market participants were consolidated.

A lot of time, considerable financial and, most importantly, human resources were invested in the project. The justified investment is already confirmed by the increase of efficiency of the company “Astarta”. Other market participants can increase their effectiveness with proven solutions already today. The company is ready to share its achievements for a much lower cost than was spent on development.

The social mission of the project.
AgriChain is not just a business project, it also performs a social mission. “Astarta-Kyiv” is a public European company formed with the mission of which is to build a strong Ukraine and strengthen its trust in it in the world, opening up and increasing the potential of Ukrainian land and people, encouraging society to do business on the principles of fair partnership, ethics, and development. Therefore, the holding company needs to share its achievements with the market participants, making the industry and its participants as effective as possible.

“Agrichain” invites constructive dialog, exchange of experience, and the most effective practices of agro-producers. We offer to combine AgriChain platforms, which will allow us to plan and manage it at all stages of the production process in a high-quality manner, to control risks, thus increasing the efficiency of each producer, and also to improve the system through the consolidation of the best practices and experience of all participants to increase the efficiency of the industry as a whole” – Natalia Bogacheva, Chief Executive Officer of AgriChain.

Importance of data management

The needs of agro-enterprises in automation are different, but not unique. Apart from the management of the land bank, one is interested in the plan-fact module of analysis of the performance of the production program, the other is the unit of account of the parts in warehouses to prevent theft or function of BI-systems, etc.
large agro holdings in their work face the complete set of agricultural tasks, and the system product of AgriChain contains solutions of most of them.

The AgriChain ecosystem provides a supply chain solution that allows you to optimize the client’s operational processes and get maximum expertise.

It has already come to the understanding that completeness, the objectivity of data, and the ability to work with them are the way to effective agro-production. And the future is in the digital optimization of processes. Now the turn is on small and medium-sized enterprises.

Today’s agricultural enterprises are either dozens of purchased software products that are not integrated and do not have management functions or, most often, it is GIS systems, in which manual data audit is carried out and integration with accounting systems is carried out.

At the heart of the AgriChain solution, the concept is full integration with 1C, GPS monitoring system, and satellite and meteorological data, which complement the system with necessary indicators, simplify document flow, and process complexity. And if the data that is in the enterprise is organized, structured, and stored in electronic form, then the system deployment can be performed within one day.

The business objectives of AgriChain.
When implementing the system it is important to take into account the interests of all participants: Managers, performers, and partners. This will avoid resistance from experts who are accustomed to the old methods of work.

Minimizing costs and increasing profitability is what the business wants. To get an effective instrument of management and analysis of production, to know the role and responsibility in business is what specialists want.

AgriChain solves the following business and industry challenges:
AgriChainYear platform modules consist of five ready modules and two modules — at the stage of development.

Khmara service is more suitable for small and medium-sized agribusinesses that do not need to be engaged in administration and have their DevOps specialists. AgriChain is responsible for technical support and system development.

The base solution provides administration (technical, server) by the client. The client pays the cost of a two-year subscription once. Many people choose this option, fearing for data storage, but the enterprise data is stored not on Astarta servers, but server sites, to which no one except the client company has access.

AgriChain’s in-box solutions also provide advice and support to customers by helping to implement the system, advising and training specialists.
Training is focused on ensuring that the customer company has at least 1-2 professionals who have the necessary knowledge and skills in the system.

It is important, that if a customer chooses a box-based solution, he will still receive service and technical support. The company is not interested in simply selling the decision, the main goal is to use it effectively.

Implementation in practice. Today the AgriChainFarm module is already operating for 250 thousand ha. With the help of AgriChainLand, the whole area of the land bank “Astarta” is managed.

Before the implementation of the system, performance was tested at the test enterprise with a land bank of 10 thousand ha.

Many problems were identified with the product: Underprocessing, overprocessing, and technical losses. As a result of the test use, the real effect was obtained, which was confirmed by quantitative and financial indicators.

Using the AgriChain Farm module allowed us to achieve a direct economic effect of UAH 793 000.

As a result of the AgriChain Land module, a total economic effect of UAH 3 726 440 was achieved.
As experience shows, AgriChain offers its customers working solutions that have proven their effectiveness. the company has concluded its first commercial contracts for the acquisition of system modules by third parties and is currently integrating solutions and implementation.