What does digital support look like for farmers who want to run their farms profitably? RWA Raiffeisen Ware Austria approached iteratec with this question, open to any possible outcome. The result was an online portal for farmers.
The free online portal www.OnFarming.at is proving increasingly popular with its target audience: agricultural businesses in Austria. It sets an example across Europe in the agricultural sector because it manages to cover all areas of farming – from arable farming and livestock rearing to viticulture – whilst offering a direct line to a customer adviser. The portal can be further developed as required and integrate countless third-party providers. RWA is thus creating unrivalled customer loyalty and excelling with this digital initiative in an industry steeped in tradition.
How do farmers decide which crops to grow in which fields? Across Austria, there are warehouses distributed throughout the country that act as strong business partners for farmers, supporting them with expertise, advice and a wide range of products.
They aim to be an even more reliable source of support for farmers by providing them with fully personalised recommendations that
and much more.
This starting point – and an associated business case for the new digital business model of the Lagerhaus organisation – was developed by a team from RWA, the umbrella organisation for the Lagerhaus cooperatives, and iteratec, comprising an interdisciplinary team of UI/UX designers, front-end and back-end developers, and product owners.
In the space of just one generation, the agricultural sector has changed rapidly. As operations shift from many smaller farms to larger, fully automated businesses, farmers are increasingly becoming technicians as well. The theory is that an online portal can support them through this transformation. To ensure that an online portal would indeed be the right technical solution for the umbrella organisation in practice, the team first developed a proof of concept – in other words, a stripped-down test version. It proved convincing.
It took less than nine months from the initial contact to the go-live of the first version of the online portal www.OnFarming.at. Since then, the RWA and iteratec have been working together in a spirit of trust and are continuously expanding the portal with features requested by farmers. Here is an excerpt:
OnFarming is regarded as a unique platform in the Austrian agricultural sector and is enjoying growing popularity. Thanks to the portal, which can be used on both mobile devices and desktops, farmers often no longer need to make the trip to the warehouse. Furthermore, a wide range of information relating to the farm can be stored within the portal, including, for example, results from third-party providers, such as soil sample analyses from the laboratory.
The challenge we set ourselves was to create an additional digital service and thus add value to the traditional business relationship between farmers and grain store cooperatives. With a clear vision but an open-ended approach, we developed a suitable business case through joint planning and development. The collaborative partnership in this complex environment proved particularly valuable.
Head of Agricultural Marketing, RWA Raiffeisen Ware Austria
To achieve good and swift results, we also took an unconventional approach, for example by integrating the design process in parallel with the technical implementation. Experimenting with new ideas runs like a common thread through the project, and so we at iteratec are also in constant dialogue with many departments, specialist areas and the cooperatively organised storage cooperatives, each with their own individual requirements. Together, we test new ideas and continue to develop the platform both functionally and technically. Furthermore, RWA also had the courage to break new ground in our collaboration, and so we work in short two-week release cycles agilely using SCRUM, and at times also Kanban.
RWA Raiffeisen Ware Austria AG is the wholesale and services company for the warehouse cooperatives in Austria, as well as a holding group with more than 30 subsidiaries in various countries.
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