“AgSights builds versatility into their solutions and continually innovates – looking for pain points in businesses and finding solutions to relieve them.”
Today in the Agriculture arena finding easy-to-use tools that give farmers, producers, and consumers a realistic and current look at what’s working well and identify areas for improvement to grow their productivity is lacking.
AgSights began in 1993 and are dedicated to making data capture along the food supply chain as easy as possible using innovative techniques and adding value by providing linkages and analysis. The company is working with their members to implement features that are practical and bring value to their business. They collaborate with associations and organizations like Canadian Cattle Identification Agency to act on behalf of their members to seamlessly share information as directed by the members while maintaining transparency through their data use policy.
The company is led by Betty-Jo Almond, General Manager, who ensures the products and services remain current and innovative in the marketplace; they collaborate with different organizations, businesses, and universities across the country. AgSights builds versatility into their solutions and continually innovates – looking for pain points in businesses and finding solutions to relieve them. Their Go360|bioTrack software has evolved to enable use outside of internet service, Bluetooth connections and real-time data capture on any device so livestock producers can use technology they are already comfortable with within their daily operations.
Their bioLinks solution incorporates a point-of-sale solution and sharing of financial information to QuickBooks online to help members save time with seamless integration from start to end of selling agri-food products.
Go360|bioTrack captures data in real-time so when the work is done, farmers can enjoy their families without added tasks to manage records. “We know farmers are not capturing one piece of information at a time. Our quick entry feature for farmers means they setup the process flow based on the type of records they are capturing so it doesn’t slow down processing,” explains Betty-Jo. “Our multi event feature shows all the appropriate data fields and when all is entered, it is ready to capture the information on the next animal. At the end of processing, the farmer connects to Wifi and clicks “check-in” to synchronize their records.”
Today, connecting the needs of farmers, producers, and consumers is key to growing the farming and livestock industries while promoting the integrity of traceability and information sharing. To assist the clients, the company collects data at each stage of production that provides indicators of positive or negative impact from the decisions made in the previous production stage. When information is shared across the supply chain, everyone wins. The farmer makes breeding decisions that have a direct impact on the feedlot and consumer satisfaction. Yet, they are removed from the feedback of their eating experience. Information sharing enables breeders to help the later stages of the cycle meet consumer needs that are good for their business. “Increased consumer satisfaction will drive greater demand and profitability that needs to be shared to foster collaboration up and down the supply chain,” adds Betty-Jo. “A great example is that consumers today want to know more about the product they are buying. Without traceability, the complete story is not able to be told leaving consumers feeling uninformed and looking for product that shares the information they are looking for.”
AgSights began as a primary service provider of genetic evaluations to the beef sector. Since then, their line of services have grown to offering a suite of ag-data collection tools that help build accuracy and seamlessly incorporate value-added data like genetic evaluations to help farmers better manage their livestock enterprise. AgSights will continue to grow with its members and, with member feedback, continue to develop easy to use tools for farmers in their daily operations. AgSights solutions will continue to integrate to help tell the story of food from start to finish and enable information sharing to improve its members’ products. AgSights will be launching an improved version of their bioLinks solution soon. This will help continue the information sharing for small to medium-sized harvesting and retail businesses. bioLinks 2.0 will include point-of-sale, integration with QuickBooks Online, and the flexibility to brand eCommerce solutions to fit each member’s business. It also offers the ability to collect consumer information using QR codes, creating a competitive edge to their supply chain.
