Author: Mike Terning
The world of rock and roll lost some legends back in 2016, including Eagles founder Glenn Frey, Greg Lake and Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer), Prince and David Bowie to name a few. One of Bowie’s most popular songs was called “Changes”. Here’s a portion of it:
“Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes, Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes, Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older
Time may change me, But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me, But I can’t trace time”
While I’m not much of a Bowie fan, I do like this song. He basically says we change through time and it is difficult to pin point when some changes occur.
In meetings with customers and partners, the question “What’s new with Greenstone?” or “What has changed in AGRIS” is frequently asked.
My answer to that question is often tailored to the role of the person asking the question, or the roles that the person servers within the organization.
So in the spirit of trying to “trace time”, the below is meant to highlight a few things that have changed recently, based on the roles within your business.
Accounting / Back-office / Finance – CFO, Controller, Office Manager, Accountant, Customer Service
Challenges | Changes / Solutions |
|---|---|
| Time and effort to electronically share information with stakeholders |
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| Time and effort to find different information when in another area of the system | “Home” button |
| Inability to place information on a form or report and difficulty understanding information | Upgrade to Active 10 Reports and Forms Designer with “Shrink-to-fit” font sizes to and graphing capabilities |
Agronomy Department – Agronomists, Agronomy Manager
Challenges | Changes / Solutions |
|---|---|
| Time to identify a grower’s farms, fields and crop zones | New client, farm, field, crop zone & mapping engines in AgroGuide |
| Effort to share applicable farm/field information with the grower | Tailor and then share Field Notebooks with growers via Email and the iView service |
| Difficulty enforcing pricing policies when capturing item specific prepayments and bookings | Item Specific Prepay and Booking price validates from Minimum and Maximum price allowed |
Cooperative Accounting / Back-office / Finance – CFO, Controllers, Office Manager, Member Service
Challenges | Changes / Solutions |
| Time and effort to identify and understand how to properly classifycustomers / patrons for voting and patronage refund purposes | New report that lists voting and non-voting stock holders with activity with patronage codes and stock class ownership |
| Errors exporting, calculating and importing 1099-PATR per-unit retainallocations | Calculate and populate 1099-PATR Section 199 deduction information without requiring an import |
Grain Origination – Grain Procurement and Merchandising staff, Grain Accounting
Challenges | Changes / Solutions |
| Time and effort to edit Options on individual line items. | Ability to tie Options to a particular line item and allow price to accumulate (rather than be replaced) when changed |
| Time and effort to find different information when in another area of the system | “Home” button |
| Interruptions during freight ticket entry with phone calls and other questions resulting in losing track of what was entered (i.e., the second or third cost, what was the last cost entered, how much has been entered so far, etc.) | Freight Only Ticket – easily see what freight tickets have been entered and view all freight tickets associated to a primary ticket. |
| Use of consistent Farm/Field Remarks for Proof of Yield reporting | Farm/Field – Ticket Entry: Ability for a user to easily select customer Name ID and Farm/Field on ticket entry
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