NPR - CLOUD BENCHMARKING FOR FARM MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Benchmarking is used widely in farm management helping managers identify key opportunities for business improvement.

The Farmanco Profit Series is a numbered benchmarking service. Each number represents a farming business. The detail of each business can be followed on each graph, enabling detailed comparisons from capital position through to machinery investment, enterprise mix, variable costs, production and profit of each enterprise.

This benchmarking service is provided via an on-line portal to all growers in Australia, and by default has worldwide implications. This has become a new layer in BIG DATA, although the output is only available to those contributing data. A key concern with benchmarking and big data is data security, which has been addressed through client facing password protection and backend encryption.

Another key concern with benchmark data is being thoroughly checked and accurate. This portal has tolerances and flags for all measures highlighting areas that may be inaccurate or need to be checked by professional staff.

The key step-change for farm managers is that this benchmarking service is accessible from a smartphone or office computer simply by contributing data into the portal. Feedback in many forms is available on an almost instantaneous basis once data is submitted.

Keywords: Farming, Benchmarking, Profit, Big Data, Numbered Graphs, Accuracy