Mole Valley farming moves into the Internet of Cows with Dynamics AX and Power BI

"Our customers want to know exactly when beef is ripe for the slaughter" explains CRM manager Alan Parsons

Agricultural company Mole Valley is making aggressive inroads into data analytics by equipping its farming customers with Microsoft's Dynamics AX ERP system, Power BI and SharePoint to turn animal husbandry into an exact science.

Speaking at Microsoft's Convergence 2015 conference in Barcelona today, Mole Valley's CRM manager Alan Parsons explained how Mole Valley - which has an annual revenue of £422m among a 75,000, often SME-based, customer base across traditional farming, vet services and country stores in the UK - rolled out Microsoft Dynamics AX R3 between September 2014 and November 2015, with customers already live in January 2015 and Sharepoint implemented between August 2015 and November 2015.

"Things we [didn't] need, we've [went] back and thought about whether we need them, to fit the IT structure," said Parsons when explaining the quick turnover, and how Mole Valley was able to plug in five years' worth of BI data from SQL Server.

"Sharepoint has allowed us to use Yammer and workflows, Bing on the back end for delivery schedules, and all through the Sharepoint platform," he said.

"That's all enterprise support in Dynamics, exposing [customers] to real time data."

Parsons said he couldn't "emphasise the power of that BI [enough]", and the addition of Azure cloud helped bring Power BI and Dynamics "toghether into a deliverable mechanism".

"The joys of a single BI," enthused Parsons.

After his presentation, Computing asked Parsons whether the new Dynamics and BI rollout provided scope for IoT-based analytics for farmers.

"Yes," replied Parsons, speaking of the mobile POS [point of service] system that Mole Valley has developed for its customers.

"The AX portal is the back-end, and the farmers want to know how fast their cows are growing, when they're ripe for the slaughter, or when's the best time to turn over poultry," he told Computing.

"We're building miniature apps to store that info on the cloud and it links in seamlessly into how much [customers are] spending at Mole Valley - when they need to replenish stock, how big the portions should be for the animals, how you can know when the grass can grow faster - this is all information from the cloud.

"Our reps can see all this and see how Mole Valley is interacting with customers."

Parsons described the M-POS as "a really beautiful platform - not just a POS - it's much bigger".

"It gives the customers the ability to order stuff direct, and you can embed that in the SharePoint front-end. It's a webpage, effectively," he added, pointing out the importance of streamlined builds for end users who may live in areas of rural, low-speed WiFi.

Parsons described Mole Valley as "a company keen to shape its future for the benefit of our farming and rural customers and partners".

"Dairy famers, sheep farmers and cow farmers are all being powered by Microsoft tools, even if they don't realise it," he concluded.