The story in brief
- Agricultural trade meets digital know-how: agrantis is modernizing an entire industry with the help of TeamViewer.
- The global development team conveniently accesses the installations via TeamViewer.
- The start-up is digitalizing the agricultural value chain and has been using TeamViewer for remote access to customer devices since its founding – even in remote regions.
- TeamViewer is in use at agrantis almost daily for customer service or updates
- Most of agrantis’ customers already know how TeamViewer works – a great advantage when rolling out the solution
Introduction
Start-up agrantis digitalizes the agricultural value chain with software solutions that are directly connected to the customers' merchandise management systems. TeamViewer allows the international development team to install agrantis’ solution remotely. The entire customer service, including troubleshooting, maintenance and updates, also runs via TeamViewer - the business model only works with a remote access solution. From the very beginning, founder Pia Wolf and her six-person team relied on TeamViewer, which is already widely used in the agricultural industry.
Challenges
The climate crisis, structural change and global threats and challenges have a direct impact on the agricultural industry. Farmers and agricultural traders are therefore called upon to rethink: the old farmers' sayings no longer apply. In order to sow and fertilize, buy and sell as wisely as possible in volatile times, they must make decisions based on data in real time. In doing so, they depend on staying well-connected and designing their own processes efficiently, for example by using digital tools.
But how can the value chain be digitalized in an industry that is often still on the move with pen, paper and fax and is primarily located in remote locations? This was the challenge faced by agrantis' customers. It could only be solved with remote access software, especially since the international development team installs, maintains and fixes errors remotely.
Pia Wolf Founder at agrantis
“TeamViewer paves the way for us into the industry. This is how we succeed in digitizing the agricultural value chain.”
Solution
Coming from a family of land traders and as a senior software expert with corporate experience, Pia Wolf knew what really helps agricultural traders and farmers: a mobile solution that digitalizes the entire value chain. Together with Matthias Kuhn, she founded the now seven-member start-up agrantis. An international team of developers created a lean solution that optimizes collaboration between traders and farmers. It simplifies processes related to the trade of agricultural products, for example by allowing the sales representatives in agricultural trade to view all the information from the merchandise management system in real time. Farmers, for example, can also use agrantis’ app to order the products they need at any time.
Due to the decentralized structure of the industry and the globally distributed development team, it was impossible for agrantis to always support customers on site. From the very beginning, the start-up therefore used TeamViewer Remote for customer service. As a rule, agricultural dealers host their merchandise management systems on their own servers. The agrantis employees use TeamViewer to set up the application for their customers. This includes, for example, the interface between the merchandise management system of the agricultural trader and the app at the farmers or sales representatives. The team connects to a customer device almost daily via TeamViewer.
Both sides benefit from TeamViewer’s Unattended Access feature. It makes it possible to connect to a device via TeamViewer without employees of the agricultural trade having to accept the connection request. In this way, the agrantis team can seamlessly set up the application without any action from the customer.
agrantis also maintains the installations via TeamViewer and fixes issues via remote access. No matter what time zone the developers are in, they can get their work done at any time. It is also convenient for customers if any problems are solved overnight and interruptions of the business are reduced to a minimum.
Pia Wolf Founder at agrantis
“Intuitive, catchy, stable: I think TeamViewer is great and recommend it to start-ups, especially for customers who have less to do with IT and are based in very remote places. It saves an incredible amount of time and resources.
Results
TeamViewer enables agrantis GmbH to introduce its app for agricultural retailers and farmers to customers in a secure and user-friendly way and to scale the start-up quickly. In order to get the best developers on board, agrantis has set English as the corporate language. In combination with TeamViewer, this approach enables a seamless international roll-out as well as rapid company growth.
The Unattended Access function also contributes to this. It relieves the burden on both the agricultural traders and farmers as well as Pia Wolf and her colleagues, because they do not have to accompany the onboarding on site or at a specific time. Instead, they can use the time saved, for example, for acquisition and the further expansion of the business.
Software as a Service at its best: The agrantis team was in contact with TeamViewer's customer service – because there were no problems whatsoever. The acceptance of the solution is also supported by its high market penetration, as TeamViewer Remote is widely used in agriculture and trade.
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