Challenge

Silver Fern Farms is an iconic and long standing local cooperative producing 30% of all of New Zealand’s lamb, beef and venison. Currently running Dynamics CRM with customers spanning across New Zealand, Silver Fern Farms needed to leverage their customer records so that their South Island suppliers could make a booking for the collection of calves from their farm securely, remotely and most importantly, easily.

The bobby calf supplier’s day is traditionally varied and extremely busy, where sitting at a computer and making and taking phone calls for bookings was simply not viable or cost efficient. Silver Fern Farms needed to make it as easy as possible for their bobby calf suppliers to relay booking orders to them quickly.

The team at Silver Fern Farms needed a way for their suppliers to not only make bookings in some remote locations with connectivity challenges, but also to provide suppliers with direct confirmation of their booking, wherever they were. The challenge then was to automate internal workflows that were traditionally process-heavy and handled manually.

Solution

Seeking ways to connect with their clients instantly, on the move and in locations with limited connectivity, Silver Fern Farms looked to Magnetism’s SMS (Short Message Service) Connector integrating directly with their Dynamics CRM platform.

Silver Fern Farms were already running a Dynamics CRM system which allowed them to leverage their investment and utilise Magnetism’s out-of-the-box SMS Connector alongside custom-built workflows.

The SMS connector enabled group texts to be sent out to the bobby calf suppliers based specifically on their region. These messages were automatically delivered based on the next scheduled collection time for that location. The connector communicates directly with the CRM system, ensuring the message is sent out and then the supplier’s reply along with the specific booking is logged against the customer record and fed into the booking system.

In this case, Silver Fern Farms sent a text to the targeted section of their database in a specific location asking them how many calves needed to be picked up. The farmers could then reply with the number of calves which would then start a workflow. The text from the farmers ran past a validation point, where it automatically pulled out the number in the text, “Please book in 15 bobbys, thanks” would then receive a reply “15 confirmed”.

Silver Fern Farms then implemented a workflow that allowed this information to be automatically sent to a pre-determined cartage company for that region. This compiled all of the relevant information needed for the pick up to occur including contact information, the clients’ dairy supply number and calf collection numbers.