A Tool for Consumer Security and Market Advantage

Consumers today want to know exactly what contains the food they buy, where it has gone through and where it comes from. Traceability is the response: a tool to track all links in the food supply chain.

In response, most countries are introducing mandatory traceability requirements to track all links in this chain, from farmers to processors, retailers and consumers.

Even locals producers of importing countries will appreciate the advantages of a system that allows monitoring the import of competing goods into their country and avoiding the possible overlapping with their production in order to generate the highest return on investment for all parts.

Geo-Traceability

It goes a step further to the mandatory traceability requirements and give a market advantage for producers and importers establishing a clear relation between the product and the territory through the provision of detailed geographical information and digital maps or satellite images of the land plot and the related environment where the product was harvested and processed. This has proved to have a great impact on the end consumer.

As A Farmer

The cultivation program, the right amount of organic and/or inorganic pesticides and fertilizers needed by the crops at the right time to achieve a high quality product at harvesting can be monitored by an information system. The agriculture experts can be supported by the system in their every day routine, keeping track of the products used and controlling variables during the all the crop development stages. Sending a simple SMS from any mobile is enough to update the geo-database and share through the web the information with any other partner, anywhere in the world.

As An Exporter

The geo-traceability system represents a competent and exclusively tailored information systems to provide a solid organizational framework with a clear advantage. Products can be tracked all the way back to farm where they were cultivated, the type of seeds used, the fertilization and irrigation program, in open farms or tunnels, organic/inorganic fertilizers or otherwise, the harvesting process up to the packing house, and shipping to the final destination. Having all information available and and easy to update through your mobile.

Think of it as a spatially enabled enterprise resource planning system developed exclusively for the specific needs of participating entities while remaining flexible enough to accommodate future replication and operations scope expansion.

As A Consumer

Feeling secure towards the products is an optimum scenario, by knowing all the information about it, from the farm, seeds planted, crop treatments, logistics, all kinds of information related to this product in an easy way to understand and completely accessible, never seen before. This information disclosure creates trust in the consumer and gives the brand name of the product a level of quality and a competent position in the market.

This kind of knowledge makes it easier for the consumer to decide to choose this product based on the fact that it does not contain any inappropriate substance. The geographic location information has a big impact, which also adds value to the referred product.

Just enter the product batch number from the label of the product you have just purchased and using your computer connected to the Internet and an amazing wealth of information will be at your disposal.

The Market Positioning Advantage

With the retention of historical pricing data per crop/destination/time, it becomes possible to produce very sophisticated product positioning assessments. With the provision of ancillary pricing information pertaining to other exports and competing products.

The geo-traceability system, once being used, has a potential to evolve into a real marketing positioning and assessment tool capable of highlighting areas of comparative advantage and disadvantage. For an operation where the marketing component is very important, having the ability to use extensive information rapidly and accurately to direct overall efforts in the neighborhood of greater profit is probably the greatest factor of potential with respect to the overarching need for improvement in the tracking process.

Managing And Integrating All Components: The ERP Complement

Producers and exporters require a relatively advanced level of enterprise automation in order to be able to implement a proper traceability system that can fit smoothly in the enterprise production process. With a small additional effort, aimed at integrating the traceability features inside the production process, they will also be able to manage their resources, obtaining full control on their cost chain, through a fully integrated ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning System, specifically adapted for the needs and the limited resources of the SMEs of the sector but retaining the full potential of the costly ERP implemented by large companies and organizations.

ERP systems, when fully implemented and working, can become a vital component of the enterprise and improve the business model for both the producers and exporters/importers: the fundamental key success driver in the entire system is finally the ability to work with very diverse and rapidly changing information to properly cope with international market changes.

The Open Source Advantage

Typically, sophisticated software products tend to be extremely expensive and require important hardware investment. Our solution is Open Source. It means that you will not pay for the software itself but for the related services you may require. Being Web based it’s geographically distributed: you can access it from anywhere in the world, but, also, it can hosted in your Web server, in our or anywhere where an Internet connection is available. No worry for maintenance, upgrades, back-up and expensive IT services.

IT Synergy believes in complementing open source software components with implementation of open protocols and standards, as well as basing all development on open interfaces and tools. Development costs associated with this approach is typically far lower than that of a feature-comparable proprietary solution; to further simplify the development work and thereby reduce costs, stringent componentization is employed as a core software design philosophy (with the intended though incidental side benefit of resulting in modular and very future-proof systems).

The pace of development associated with open source is very rapid; software components improve in quality, capability, and efficiency almost continuously. IT Synergy has a long tradition of integration with the communities responsible for open source development and takes pride in implementing advances as they are made. Obsolescence is an unknown concept in our development and consultancy projects.

IT Synergy

IT Synergy is a consultant with development capability: we are not software vendor; the distinction is critical. It means that we are interested in delivering sustainable systems and not in selling licenses or software packages.

All of our projects contain integral capacity-building components, typically including but not limited to training the technology beneficiaries not only in how to use the system but in how to actually take charge and ownership. We expect to build better lives through technology; the technology does nothing without capable owners and users.

Unlike traditional consultants, we will not only teach the client how to use the GIS, but will also provide the source code and train them to replace us as developers, administrators, users, and caretakers upon project delivery.

We like to make our living by creating sustainability; the only way to do this is through rigorous technology transfer as a core project philosophy.

Our overall experience of complex technology deploys indicates the success of the formula which we as IT Synergy promote and believe in; cost savings on the hardware and software component are reflected in a greater focus on technology transfer and capacity-building on behalf of the recipient organization through training and human development.

Our Vison

In the traceability field, IT Synergy’s vision has been developing systems based on a Geographical Information System back-end supported by an industrial-class Enterprise Resources Planning – ERP – based on a solid relational database management system server. The reason for this fundamental technology decision is that the data created and the ensuing information required to successfully operate it is spatial in nature; the district, the farms, the packing centers, the shipping beginning and end-points, the importers, and the ultimate markets are all entities which yield richer information when they are represented geographically as opposed to a traditional and less intelligent plain database. It will also provide to the stakeholders “market intelligence” and real-time information on all the stages of the process, from the planning phase to the final delivery to the consumer.

Providing an innovative approach to the traceability concept, the consumer will receive a wealth of information that will position the product well above the rest, adding value to the certified quality.

Learn more now, download our brochure or visit the Green Corridor project website:

 

 

 

 

 

• Geo Traceability Brochure
• Visit the www.green-corridor.com website for more information