The Limpopo Department of Agriculture (LDA) provides agriculture training and administrative and support services in the South African Limpopo Province. For many years, LDA has relied on Microsoft technologies for messaging, collaboration, and business productivity. Recently, LDA joined a Microsoft Office 365 early adopter program to understand how it could benefit from Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus and online services such as Microsoft Lync Online.

John I. Haas, a leader in hops trading and processing, wanted to provide tools and better information for its growers, customers, and employees to improve its business processes. They implemented a Business-Critical SharePoint solution from Dell, called Dell™ Quick Apps for SharePoint ®, to enable users to quickly display and aggregate business-critical Oracle data in rich and compelling 3D charts in SharePoint—without expensive and time-consuming custom coding.

A worldwide provider of agricultural products, AB Agri runs a rapidly evolving business, with manufacturing operations in many countries, a large vendor network, and stringent requirements for manufacturing management and cost control. The business supplies products and services to farmers, feed and food manufacturers, processors, and retailers. In looking to streamline business processes and efficiently pursue its international growth aspirations, the company implemented Microsoft Dynamics AX as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In many areas of the business, the company has taken advantage of Microsoft Dynamics AX to generate cost reductions and efficiencies. In addition, AB Agri uses the ERP system to meet the needs of customers in fast-moving markets and realize its strategy in a profitable manner.

A trusted brand at the breakfast table, Sunny Queen Australia wanted to enhance inventory management and improve service delivery in order to offer finest quality fresh farm eggs and egg products to Australians. With Microsoft Dynamics AX, Sunny Queen successfully transformed their integrated supply chain which resulted in significant efficiency gains, enhanced inventory management and increased business visibility.

Providing a true self-service business intelligence reporting system whereby users can create reports, slice-and-dice pivot tables and charts to produce the exact report that Rossouw's customers require.

Harris Farm Markets is a family-owned and -run fruit and vegetable business. The company has more than 1,000 employees in 26 stores across New South Wales, Australia. To manage its business, Harris Farm Markets relied on manual processes and ageing systems. The company’s stocktake and ordering processes were inefficient and sometimes inaccurate, and management wanted new data analysis and reporting capabilities. From April 2009 Harris Farm Markets began implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and also implemented Windows Mobile on its 80 in-store handheld scanners. Harris Farm Markets now has a cohesive, easily customisable system for managing its finances, stock movement and retail merchandising. It has automated labour-intensive ordering, allowing staff to focus on improving the customer experience, and fresh produce deliveries now leave the markets up to two hours earlier each morning.

Biobest operates in the fast-growing field of environmentally friendly agriculture. The Belgian firm sells bumblebees for natural pollination and beneficial insects and biopesticides for pest control. To help salespeople target the best opportunities and give management access to up-to-date sales data, Biobest worked with IT partner element61 to create a sales reporting solution that is delivered as a cloud service using Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting. Because salespeople can access the tool from any web browser, they can submit data to management in hours rather than days and be much more effective in their sales efforts. Biobest avoided spending US$50,000 to create an in-house reporting infrastructure and was able to create the solution in just three months. And because the cloud service is cost-effective and scalable, Biobest can expand access to the tool as the company grows.

Lantmännen is one of the largest groups in the agriculture, machinery, energy, and food industries in the Nordic region. In 2006, Lantmännen implemented IBM Lotus Notes as its first central mail service. It later switched to a Microsoft unified communications solution, but as the company grew, it found that its costs for storage, backups, and administration were increasing rapidly. Lantmännen wanted to find a way to provide consistent communications services for its employees without incurring additional costs, so it decided to transition to Microsoft Office 365, which combines the familiar Office desktop with the next generation of cloud-based communication and collaboration services. By using Office 365, Lantmännen found that it could reduce costs and administration while also providing the latest capabilities to help its employees communicate more effectively.

The typical farmer knows more about turnips than telephony, so when the Organic Valley Family of Farms needed expertise in the latter, it had a challenge. The 1,636-member cooperative was faced with the prospect of expanding its Mitel private branch exchange (PBX) to unaffordable lengths to support the cooperative’s continued growth. With the help of solution provider Project Leadership Associates, Organic Valley adopted a Microsoft Unified Communications solution with PBX functionality. The results: Organic Valley has the long-term scalability it sought at half the cost of the traditional PBX. In addition, the cooperative gains twice the functionality while reducing system deployment time by 75 percent and employee provisioning time from three days to one minute.

With multiple production systems across many lines of business, generating consolidated reporting to reflect the organization as a whole was very difficult for Silver Fern Farms. A change in the company philosophy combined with a new business strategy – �Plate to Pasture’ – meant the company required a state-of-the-art Business Intelligence platform. To support the new business strategy, Silver Fern Farms leveraged Microsoft SQL Server to build a Data Warehouse solution that consolidates information across the enterprise as a whole.