Dow AgroSciences LLC, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, is a top-tier agricultural company providing innovative agrochemical and biotechnology solutions globally. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, has worldwide sales of $4.5 billion.  

Dow AgroSciences has been a customer of F4F Agriculture in Australia since July 2004 utilising the industry standard b2b transactional document exchange solution with their major distributor customers. In a recent announcement Dow AgroScience has selected F4F to deliver its b2b requirements in the New Zealand market also, leveraging the same system interfaces as they already utilise for Australia.

Glen Andrews, Managing Director for F4F Agriculture in Asia Pacific, in making the announcement, noted that it was particularly pleasing to see Dow expanding the utilisation of their existing solution. “It makes logical and economic sense for the substantial business that Dow has in New Zealand to re-use the same mappings, the same schemas, the same platform, the same back office connectivity as we have already deployed for Dow AgroScience in Australia” he stated.

Beiselen GmbH (www.beiselen.de), one of the leading private agricultural commercial businesses in Germany and neighbouring countries, has selected F4F Agriculture to implement business document exchange with their major suppliers. Beiselen, founded in 1890, started with the production and sale of fertilizers and has today become a modern commercial enterprise for the core businesses of fertilizers, crop protection, seeds, agricultural products, foils and binding twine, as well as for products for home and garden requirements.

During its 100 years and more of history, Beiselen has experienced continuous change and has regularly embraced new developments. As the only self-sufficient and independent commercial enterprise in Germany, Beiselen has actively accompanied customers and suppliers in the agricultural field on the journey into the future, and will continue to do so.

“Continuous improvement in all business areas is driving the company: therefore it was the next logical step to use F4F, as the leading provider for eBusiness solutions in the agricultural industry, to improve business processes in our supply chain”, says Ralf Tannhäuser, project manager for eBusiness at Beiselen.”

June 2010

Glen Andrews, Managing Director for F4F Agriculture in Asia Pacific is delighted to welcome Becker Underwood Pty Ltd into the F4F community in Australia and New Zealand.

The Becker Underwood Group is the world leader in the development, manufacture and marketing of biotech specialties, bio-pesticides, seed enhancements, legume inoculants, and turf and landscape products. Becker Underwood will commence their activities in the F4F community by implementing b2b transactional document exchange with their distributor customers in Australia, with a view to utilising the same solution in other territories over time

Bayer Healthcare (Bayer) recently chose F4F to create and host their Betaferon web portal. The portal takes orders from Pharmacy customers via a web-browser based portal, takes credit card payment and provides information from Bayer back to their Pharmacy customers. Bayer desired the portal to create an even stronger relationship with their Pharmacy customer base, whilst at the same time reducing their impact on the environment by automating the fax ordering process.

Bayer chose F4F to deliver the portal as F4F passed their global security requirements, was the most cost effective solution and had existing infrastructure which could link to Bayer's SAP system. Bayer reported that F4F supported their requirements well, met all deadlines on time, met Bayer's standards and that they would work with F4F again if the opportunity arose.

Since the portal go-live Bayer has realised the expected cost savings and manual process automation, tracking of orders between Bayer and Pharmacies has improved, and traffic to other Bayer value-add websites has increased. Bayer have now engaged F4F to link the portal to their SAP system to further drive cost savings and to automate the delivery of information back to their Pharmacy customers.

Agrinet Limited based in Centurion South Africa is a supplier of industrial products, agricultural requisites and related products to retailers and industrial end-users in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agrinet's direct involvement with more than 500 agricultural retail outlets in South Africa, establishes the company as a leading supplier of irrigation products and general industrial requisites on a wholesale level in the region.

Agrinet, in conjunction with First4Farming South Africa, are currently rolling out an integrated solution to all of their suppliers. The process will cover orders, order responses, goods received vouchers, invoices and invoice status updates between Agrinet and their supplier base of approximately 400 suppliers.

In order to cater for the large scale and rapid rollout, a two pronged approach is being adopted whereby suppliers can either opt for a web trading portal or for direct integrated solutions for the various message types. This approach allows for a fast rollout to all suppliers and the achievement of Agrinets goals to trade electronically with all of their suppliers by October 2010.

A number of sites have been chosen for testing on both the web trading portal and the fully integrated solutions. Feedback and responses from all engaged have been very positive. Suppliers engaged to date have noted that the web trading portal dubbed web supplier 2 is an easy tool to use. With a previous version of web supplier deployed in South Africa web supplier 2 has been enhanced in order to cater for feedback received from the suppliers in making it more user friendly.

The process continues through August and September with national road shows with groups of suppliers in order to inform, educate and enable the suppliers to trade electronically with Agrinet.

Jaco Kriel (Financial Director at Agrinet) notes: The solution is moving along nicely with positive feedback received from the majority of suppliers. The integration project is just one of a number of initiatives that Agrinet has embarked on to streamline the business process and contain costs. Further items identified by the suppliers in the group sessions will be investigated and may be added to the solution going forward.

Helena Korb (Project Manager at Agrinet) states, The project and approach has allowed for a faster adoption of an integrated trading solution than was previously thought possible. Although much work still needs to be completed, we are excited and encouraged by the progress to date.