AGDATA Australia — Home of the Phoenix Farm Management Software
By: Stephen Dummett
Tags: Livestock Industry, Crop Production, Farm Management Software, Farming, Management Accounting

https://www.agdata.com.au

I joined AGDATA Australia after working as the Alliance Manager for Unisys Australia managing the relationship between Unisys and Microsoft in the APAC region in October 2012. This was a move to an industry that I was familiar with having managed the previous role from my farm on the Darling Downs in Queensland. I’d been facilitating an IT community group on linked in and met the Managing Director of AGDATA, Glenn Skerman, at a few of our meetings. The company had always impressed me and there had been a deep desire to work for AGDATA since taking up the farm in 2003. When the opportunity presented itself I jumped at it.

What is it that makes the Company special?

Country values, the company is born and bred in the bush and understands their customer and their needs. The team is small but very efficient and it is led by the sons of the original founders, Lance and Jenny Skerman. Jenny is still involved in the business as the Financial Director and Lance still pokes his head in to see how things are going. So if there is anyone out there in the farming industry that doesn’t believe we understand the succession dilemma currently facing the Ag industry, our directors, Glenn and Brendan have lived it.

A challenge for any software company in regional Australia is finding a skilled technology workforce. Most technologists are drawn to the capital cities for the higher wages and the coastal lifestyle. AGDATA has maintained it’s development team in Toowoomba and all of the support is provided by the team there as well. It would have been very easy to outsource these roles as other companies have done but the Skerman's’ have forged ahead, often employing for attitude and training the team for skills.

What about the software?

Phoenix Farm Management Software, whilst it has over 35 years of legacy code, maintains its reputation as a innovative product that stays ahead of the technology wave. There are a number of milestones throughout the companies history where they have led for others to follow. I’m sure you have all heard the confusing term ‘cloud’ bandied about. Phoenix was one of the first accounting products (mainstream included) to move into the hosted cloud environment in 2008.

When GST was being brought in back in 2000, Phoenix was ready and to a large part, AGDATA was training farmers to use computer technology for the first time. The same has occurred in the last 12 months as small businesses were expected through legislation to adopt Single Touch Payroll. AGDATA went out to the marketplace to identify a partner in Key Pay that had a product that could be adapted to the farm easily.

Mobile technology is all the rage at the moment and whilst AGDATA wanted to be able to provide this technology to their clients, it wasn’t to be at the detriment of the quality of the information being made available to the farm manager/owner. One of the key stumbling blocks has been the lack of services in regional Australia. These challenges are becoming addressed with the roll out of more towers and the NBN. The Phoenix Live mobile app is about to be launched to provide greater value and accessibility to the farm’s data.

Why Ag-specific software?

Growing production demands, less resources and higher input costs mean that keeping track of everything that comes in and that goes out needs to be recorded and managed. Farm budgeting has never been so important as it is now, and multiple budgets should be considered to deal with all of the scenarios that can play out, including flood, fire, drought, plague and yes, even a bumper crop or higher commodity/livestock prices. Having your facts and figures at hand also means that you can take advantage of government grants and tax deductions. Thankfully, it is only the die-hard excel gurus that seem to be persisting with their spreadsheets which can be incredibly time consuming and error prone.

Agriculture is a unique industry and needs unique software to support it. No other industry needs to be able to track inventory and livestock figures that include births and deaths. Phoenix Farm Management Software is designed to cater for these specific needs.

Unlike other accounting packages out there that focus upon the needs of the accountant or tax man, Phoenix is a Management Accounting product that lends itself well to the needs of the accountant and tax man. AGDATA’s sole driving purpose is to provide the farm manager with management reports that they can use to make informed decisions.

What production products are integrated in?

Phoenix has its own Livestock, Cropping and Mapping software products that integrate to form a single source of truth for your farming business. Cropping gives you complete production recording along with extensive season and performance reporting. Livestock allows you to track the animal from birth through to the meatworks (take a look at the carcase data analysis tool) providing cost of production and performance analysis at both the individual animal or mob level.

What about the costs?

Phoenix when measured fairly against other mainstream products that try to bolt other products together in an attempt to make themselves comparable comes out very cost effective when all of the costs of the other products are considered and included. When you are dealing with AGDATA products, the buck stops with AGDATA, even when they have brought in a partner such as KeyPay. AGDATA will follow up with KeyPay to find a resolution and as such you won’t experience the finger pointing and blame game that can be experienced when dealing with multiple companies integrating their products.

AGDATA have made the farm financial management products scalable to allow the product to grow with you as your farm grows. You can compare the 3 different levels, Financial Lite, Financial and Financial Pro to see which one meets your specific needs. So, no matter what size of farm business you have, small family farm or large corporate enterprise, AGDATA has industry specific software to suit your needs.