Is your agribusiness a labour of love or a growing investment?

Farm management software enables your agribusiness to automatically record, track, and analyse all business-related activities, including accounting, business expenses, crop and livestock records, and activity planning.

Farm management software can be divided into five categories, reflecting the sector's diversity: Accounting, sheep management, dairy herd management, cattle herd management, and field and crop management.

Agribusiness technology solutions range from myriad standalone applications (some very niche and specific to those offering a broad range of features) to fully integrated ERP solutions, which control all business operations from one place. The importance of one technology over another will depend on the size, nature, and complexity of your business.

Some of the most important technology trends include:

• Cloud-based agricultural solutions that give access to critical information (from finance to logistics) anywhere, any time.
• Mobile technology (think smartphones and tablets) to cost-effectively monitor and evaluate crops and stock.
• Security technologies and RFID to track stock and even high-value crop shipments (such as organic grains).
• Smart farming, which utilises vast amounts of collected information (from crop yields to the application of specific fertilisers to weather patterns to soil mapping and animal health) and enables the business to determine future crop planting based on water usage and other factors. In addition to collecting data, drones, IoT devices, robotic harvesters, and other advanced tools offer precise crop monitoring and management and streamline and optimise operations and resource allocation.

Because farm management software keeps accurate records of livestock and crops, animal feed, fertilisers, and pesticides, you can use this information to prove that you meet industry guidelines and standards, and provide reports as required.

Modern agricultural software like an ERP is designed to streamline and integrate all aspects of your agricultural operations. By combining functions such as inventory management, finance, crop planning, equipment maintenance, and more into a centralised platform within a single system, data management is more efficient, so you can make better-informed decisions based on real-time, accurate data.

As an ERP seamlessly unites all the critical aspects of agricultural operations (from crop planning, inventory control, equipment maintenance, and financial management), your departments can collaborate to identify, optimise, and automate operational inefficiencies.

With access to real-time data, you gain instant visibility of your operation. By being able to quickly spot issues like poor equipment performance and low inventory levels, you can make faster, better decisions.