An Application Which Makes Selling Fertilizer and Seed Easier

For a farmer to grow wheat, barley, or corn, they need high-quality seed, fertilizer, and good weather. We developed an intranet and mobile application which helps sales representatives deal with the specific conditions of agriculture. This allowed us to put the overview of active contracts and commissions at the fingertips of sales representatives and made arranging new contracts easier.  

A Volatile Sector with Many Confusing Tables and Spreadsheets 

The role of cashflow is fundamental when doing commerce with farmers – the supplier delivers the promised seed and fertilizer before the season starts, but a farmer can often pay it back only after harvest. And during those few months, a spell of morning frost or a patch of heavy hail can threaten the viability of their entire crop.

“That’s why it is necessary for the suppliers to gauge the quality of their clients’ soil,” explains Hyverr CEO Pavel Tupec. “The salesperson often provides their product expecting to be paid later, so they need some sort of guarantee that the farmer will be able to pay. And companies like BOR have set limits for their sales representatives on how much product they can sell on credit and to whom. They take into account the customers’ credit history, the amount of company property and the size of the plot they farm on, amongst other things.”

The sales are also used to calculate the reward for sales representatives, and the commissions system is fairly complicated – it is determined by the size of the order, discounts, as well as the maturity of the contract. “The salesperson constantly had to juggle tables and use a calculator to determine how much they were making. They would often find out only at the end of the Quarter, when it was too late to do anything about the results,” explains Tupec. 

Make a Tool to Simplify Our Sales Representatives’ Job 

BOR commissioned us to develop an IT solution which would give workers in the field a full commission overview and speed up the drafting of contracts. “Sales representatives often found themselves in a situation where the customer wanted to order more than their pre-authorized limit. They then had to fill out tables, transport paperwork across the country, and enter their data into the system. They were spending days doing what could have been done in a few hours’ time with the right technologies,” says Tupec about the beginnings of the partnership.  

We first spent a few days out in the field with the sales representatives to get a detailed picture of what their job was about. After negotiating with the BOR management, we decided to divide the work up into stages and move fast. We opted for the following technologies: 

• JavaScript and HTML,

• framework from Microsoft .NET,

• Microsoft SQL Reporting Services (for print outputs).

Intranet and Bespoke Mobile Applications 

The development of an intranet network for sales representatives was our first task. “We developed an intranet network through which a salesperson could quickly find the data they needed. They just click and call up their contracts for a specified timeframe, for example sorting them by highest commission or by overdue payment,” describes Tupec, specifying that the intranet draws on data from the company’s ERP Dynamics NAV by Microsoft. 

We then moved onto the project’s second part – a mobile app for entering contracts. “This was mostly about the aforementioned soil quality of the customers’ land. When a farmer wanted to order extra goods, the sales representative merely had to log the request through their smartphone, which immediately forwarded the task to the company ERP and was processed by their colleague back at the office,” says Tupec: “The application makes the salesperson’s job easier by automatically filling in all the required data from the ERP into the request, for example the client’s business ID and their land area.”

We Can Save You and Your Salespeople Dozens of Work Hours 

From the first meetings to the implementation of the native application, our collaboration with BOR lasted about 2 years. “We worked in waves, so there were months of intense work as well as periods when we merely gathered feedback from people in the field,” concludes Tupec. The intranet and applications saved each sales representative many work hours per month, and they also gained quick access to calculating commisions, which increased their motivation. 

We will gladly put this know-how to use developing your project. If you are considering doing something similar, just contact us and we will happily consult with you free of charge. In 30 minutes, we can go through your plans and offer a viable solution. 

Just contact Petr Pavliš, Hyverr’s Business Development Manager, at petr.pavlis@hyverr.com or give him a call at +420 776 629 083.