INTRODUCTION Natural-Lee produces organically certified vegetables, fruit and nuts, honey, decorative plants and eggs that are grown with permaculture principles and biodynamic soils. It initially started in Phil Lee’s backyard. He and his friends started a community garden, and due to increasing demand for local grown organic food, it has grown into a commercial venture.
The business prospect has expanded in recent years with the return of Phil to his family property that historically had been used as a station for cattle grazing. Although it was a major commitment, Phil has turned much of that land into a food forest. He did not do this all by himself. He and his friends have worked tirelessly, and now they have employed horticulture and agriculture students from Southern Cross University’s Plant Science faculty to assist on the property.
With the range and volume of produce, along with the outputs of the animals, in addition to the growing number of customers, Phil is finding it hard to keep the track of things. An information system may provide a way to help manage the increasing complexities of the business. You have been brought in as a business analyst to assist with its organisation.
BACKGROUND BRIEFING The Early Days – Growing up on the Station
Phil Lee believes that he had been born to be on the land, following as he did, in his fathers’ and grandfathers’ steps with their love and passion for living sustainably and green. Of course there were also differences...especially as Phil was now passionately dedicated to growing produce rather than attending to sheep and cattle. Phil has some cows for milk and manure, and recently acquired chickens to provide different manure for fertilizing, in addition to egg production.
Phil grew great organic produce without the use of any pesticides or artificial fertilizer. He practiced companion planting to help protect crops from insect attack, and he cycled different crops from year to year to aid soil health. Phil carried in his memory an immense body of information about soil types, weather, seasons, crops, crop rotations, soil preparation, and composting. Being a station boy, he also knew many things about animal husbandry too.
Note: This case study is to be used throughout this Session to answer questions in set activities, which will be compiled into a report. Part A of the report, an “Initial Investigation” is to be submitted at the end of Week 6. The final report (including your Part A adjusted after marker feedback) is to be submitted in Week 12. You should use all relevant parts of the case study to inform your answers for the report.
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Living on a station is rough. As managers you have to deal with drought conditions and with a lack of infrastructure such as grid electricity and council water feeds. Basic survival is always at the forefront. Careful planning is a must.
Premium Pricing
Phil had given up his occupation as a carpenter when he returned to the station to dedicate time to his permaculture activities. He is now committed to growing and selling produce. People happily pay top dollar because of the high quality of food, and the ‘organically grown’ status that it holds.
Phil does not sell his produce through the local farmers market. With the success of the community garden, his customers come to him! Customers would phone through an order the day before they wanted to pick up the produce, and Phil would relay the long list of offerings that he knew he had available and ready for harvest. This could take a lot longer than most people wanted to spend on the phone. Phil worked from memory and would recite a list from start to finish, even though there were some products that various customers never, ever bought, never wanted, and were never going to buy.
Phil was a ‘chatty patty’ and loved to talk with each and every customer. He enjoyed the conversation. But, it was time consuming and it took him away from attending to his duties. In reality, while all of the customers liked Phil and loved his produce, many really wished to have a quicker and easier way of placing their orders without the need to always be asked directly by Phil about products that they were never, ever going to purchase. Many customers were frustrated that Phil would always take a long time to write down the vegetables being ordered, especially those clients who purchased the same order every week as a regular, weekly, customer. Surely, they thought to themselves, there must be a better way.
The Produce Pick Up
Customers would drop by to pick up their weekly box of produce. This was fine in the early days while his farm was quite small, but things had escalated dramatically in the last few years. Phil had a growing body of workers to assist him. His farm and produce were well regarded but popularity and demand was now causing congestion at the pick-up area. Phil was considering the practicalities of beginning a home delivery service direct to customers.
In principle, Phil would be able to manage the growing customer base as he had almost unlimited access to land and water and sun, but he was now experiencing difficulties organising all of the food boxes for his customers. The personal details for his customers including their names, phone numbers and addresses where all kept in a “Customer Book” in the shed, but he had generally made little use of this as customers would typically ring him to place an order…and increasingly such calls were coming in at inconvenient times while he was attending to the food forest.
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Phil and Wendy
Wendy is married to Phil and is fully supportive of his philosophy and approach to growing fruits and vegetables. She knew in her heart that it was scalable and that a similar approach could be used for land in other locations to serve different geographical areas. She also knew, however, that some of Phil’s business practices in dealing with customers would need to be documented to enable standardisation, and altered to be made more efficient… for both the farm and customers.
The Workers
Phil and Wendy agreed that they should each focus on a different aspect of the business. Phil would attend to all aspects of production and harvesting, while Wendy would oversee all aspects of dealing with customers, their orders, their payments and their order pick-ups. Both were happy by this because Phil was skilled and enjoyed the horticulture aspects and Wendy was skilled in customer relations and service due to her previous work in accountancy and finance.
Wendy was keen to acquire an Information System to handle the customer base, their orders, and their bills. She knew that it had potential to ease their business dealings and that new and emerging technologies could also be beneficial. Phil, however, remained unconvinced of the benefits of computers.
The number of people working on the farm had grown substantially. On the demand side of things, Doug, Debbie, Dongming and Dennis were each now sometimes taking orders from customers by phone, and reporting the orders directly to Wendy. These four people also assisted at times with horticulture activities along with some other staff who were dedicated to the farm animal activities.
A collection of lists had been written up for some of the customers who would always simply order “their usual” (subject to availability and season)…and this collection of lists had been written on a large whiteboard in the shop next to a phone to aid quicker processing. The people who were on these lists came to be referred to as “The Regulars”. To acknowledge such regular support, each was given an automatic 20% discount off the cost of their purchase.
As the produce available each week was subject to change due to weather and harvest readiness, there was sometimes confusion about what was actually available (or not) and so increasingly there were instances of customers being disappointed when they picked up their produce because it was not always what they had expected to receive. Sometimes there was also confusion about who had payed, or not payed, or partially payed.
Rena and Robert both attended to the accounts receivable side of things, and again, answered directly to Wendy. As the business had increased in size there were apparent inconsistencies
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emerging in how payments were made. Sometimes customers paid in cash, sometimes by credit, and sometimes in trade for their own goods or services.
There had also been some unpleasant scenes at the pick-up point due to too many customers arriving at the same time, only to create a traffic jam. Arguments had erupted over confusion of who was to take away which box of farm goods. It was very confusing.
Wendy hired Mark and Marsha to take over the pick-up activities. They made the firm decision that customers would no longer be able to come and get their box of produce, unless specifically pre-arranged…but would have it delivered to their home. An imposed homedelivery service. Derrek was also hired as an assistant for both Mark and Marsha to do some of the heavy lifting and sorting of the customer produce boxes.
There was no risk of spoilage due to a delivery needing to be left at a customer’s door because Phil had acquired individual customer eskies good enough to keep all things cool for 48 hours. Deliveries could thus be made to a client on any day of the week, but there was a need to minimise the number of trips to make the deliveries. Customers either lived North, South, East, West, or “close” to Phil’s station. There will be more to say about delivery timetables later in the case study.
Phil was saddened by how some aspects of the business had evolved. He was still committed to producing the best possible products for his clients, but there was a need to find some ways of better managing it all. In particular, there was a need to release himself from the client side of the business to attend to the production aspects, which he had always taken pleasure in.
To assist on the production side of things Phil had hired Ning, Nick, Mick and Nolla. Each answered to Phil directly. Their specific tasks were to assist in all manner of the gardening such as weeding, planting, watering, fertilizers, picking and pruning.
To assist on machinery part of farming and delivery, Phil had moreover hired Sam, Simon and Sarah. Simon and Sarah are both skilled at operating all manner of vehicles and machinery used on the property. They may be directed by Phil to perform any of the tasks performed using such machines but for practical purposes they both answer to Sam who is the manager of the tractors and all other farm machinery which he both operates and maintains. Sam answers directly to Phil on all production aspects, but to Wendy on aspects of customers, orders and delivery issues.
Phil used to tinker with machines when he was a boy on the station. With this, he can assist Sam if need be for maintenance tasks. However, he is really seeking to dedicate himself to the production of vegetables.
Recently, Phil and Wendy have thought about their son, Richard. He is studying marketing at Southern Cross University and he is in his final year of his study. They thought he can contribute to their marketing aspect to promote organic food and the business as well. Phil and Wendy have spoken to him and he is on board to help them from marketing perspective and also help them with the new information system that should be designed for their
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business. He is working alone and reporting to both Phil and Wendy. However, he can access different information in relation to their produce, staff and any other information which may be useful for promoting their business.
Interview with Wendy
You have been employed as a consultant to “Natural-Lee” to analyses their needs for an Information System. You were able to catch Wendy for a quick orientation of the needs of the farm, especially the customer side of things. You were also able to obtain some insight about future possibilities for expanding the farm. A record of your interview with Wendy is provided below;
You: Tell me about your farm and your business model. I’m especially interested in what kind of information management you think that you need.
Wendy: Phil is fantastic with all aspects of farming, and to be honest, he is good with customers too, but he gets side tracked too often in chatting. Besides that, I know many of the customers are frustrated that placing an order, and sometimes even just picking it up, can take much longer than people want to invest, due to all the time spent chatting.
You: I thought that Phil enjoyed dealing with the customers because he is proud to display the quality of the vegetables to them, and that he likes the interaction in general.
Wendy: That’s true, but the truth is that we need to develop a more efficient and effective way of taking orders from customers, and then getting those orders to them. We know that we produce the best fruit and vegetables in the area and Phil has that side of things in control, but we must develop a better way of meeting customers’ expectations for placing and receiving orders.
You: I have been meaning to ask about that. Why has there been an insistence that orders are always taken by phone?
Wendy: It has always been done that way, which was fine when Phil had the community garden and served just a few of the locals, but it has become unwieldly. There is no reason, at least from the business side of things, to insist on phone based order taking. I am of the view that customers should at least have the option of placing orders through a regular menu that they could drop off into our letter box…or better still, that they could somehow place orders using the internet. You might be able to offer us some ideas on that.
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You: You mean using a web page for the farm and placing orders. You could have an on-screen web form that customers select from. That would be pretty easy to produce. And it is super user-friendly if designed correctly. There would also be scope to have it updated regularly depending upon availability of produce.
Wendy: Yes. That would have to be easier for some of our customers, and there may even be other benefits from such a process.
You: Well of course. For example, if you logged the customers, you could have the web form automatically update to indicate what had been selected in their previous order to help speed things up, or if you knew that a customer had a passion for certain produce that was rarely available; you could highlight it for them when it was available.
Wendy: That sounds great, but Phil usually doesn’t indicate what is available until just the day before.
You: Why is that? Does it have to be like that? I understand that Phil may not know a month in advance, or even a week….but surely there is scope to give an indication a few days in advance, at least for some of the produce range.
Wendy: I agree, but you will have to discuss that side of things with Phil. I know, for example, with some things like potatoes and carrots and ginger and turmeric, that Phil has a very good feel for how they are growing, and how they are going for harvest, but there are other things, such as tomatoes, that he sometimes seems happily surprised at, having ripened in a day or two.
You: I thought that “ripened” referred to fruit rather than vegetables. And by the way, I wanted to ask, you don’t seem to have much fruit. Is that correct?
Wendy: Well, yes and no. We do have some fruit trees. There are some apple and pear trees, but they are very small scale and not really productive yet, though what we do get is delicious. We have various berries that are pretty constant, and in season we have mangoes and avocadoes and quite a range actually now that I think about it. We even have some macadamia nut trees, but they don’t seem to grow so well for us here. We have enough for ourselves, family, and give some to our close friends, but we have avoided bringing these into our produce for sale. These are not a prime focus of business, at least not yet.
The fruit that we do produce is fantastic but there are some major differences involved in doing large scale fruit production compared to
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vegetables. In some ways Phil has used fruit as companion planting rather than an orchid approach. We have talked about doing so, but it would just be too difficult to organise with all of our other things. I know that Phil wants to expand into this as well, and he has had discussions with some fruit growers in the area to see if we could arrange something with them.
You: You mean that they provide the fruit and you provide the vegetables?
Wendy: Well, yes and no. We do seek to use their farms and fruit trees, but Phil would only take this on if those farms also embraced the organic-only approach that we have implemented here. To do so would be possible in theory, but at the moment it would just be impossible for practical reasons
You: What are those practical reasons?
Wendy: Well, Phil is the brains behind this operation. He knows so much! And he seems to understand exactly what is going on for his plants, but most of it is all in his head. We would need to capture all of his knowledge and disseminate it to all of the farm staff in a controlled manner.
You: An information system could help you do that! And what did you say about organic-only?
Wendy: We are committed to being fully organic. All the produce needs to be dedicated organic-only, grown and processed without the use of any pesticides or chemical based fertilizers. There are implications from this because we need to be able to show through documentation that only natural, organic materials have been used at all times. That in itself can cause extra headaches trying to keep track of all the paper work.
You: I assure you that if you need to create, track, and keep documentation for those things then a computer based information system can help. This of course is a very different issue to servicing customers’ orders, but it could possibly be part of a single information system, or, you may have two systems customised for these two different purposes.
Wendy: Fantastic, that sounds great. I knew that you would be able to help us with ideas.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I will have to go soon, I have an appointment with some bush regenerators who are doing some work on our zone down by the river. You can come along if you like. You may learn something.
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You: I’m sorry. I know that is a great offer, but I am double booked. I would really like you to show me another time if that’s possible. For now, one last question. I understand that Phil grew up here, is that right?
Wendy: Yes. Born on the station actually. He has very fond memories of his grandfather, who took care of him after his parent died in an accident. His grandfather only died a few years back and it was with his passing that Phil made the decision to come back here and take over, as it was, but he has changed things to be his way with a focus on permaculture.
You: I am sure that his grandfather would be proud of what Phil is doing with the place, if he could see it.
Wendy: (laughing) He sees it all right! He wanted to be turned into compost after his death and Phil would have been happy to oblige, but the government would not allow it, so he did the next best thing. (Wendy bent down, picked up some soil and crumbled it in her right hand as she slowly circled it before her. The soil gently fell back to the Earth.)
Wendy: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, lay me to rest, in land that I trust. His grandfather is still here and sees everything that happens.
You left in your car and headed back to the office. You were not sure about all of the business practices, but you knew that their motivations were good.
On the front seat bedside you, Doug had placed a box of vegetables along with some fruit that you feel privileged to receive…”like part of the family or a close friend” you thought as you picked up an apple and took a bite….CRUNCH.
Crisp, sweet, juicy…
Ok, so they know how to grow fruit as well as vegetables…you think to yourself.
CRUNCH!
“If these guys could produce fruit like this at sufficient scale to go with their vegetables…”
You look at the apple, with fresh brittle texture gleaming in the light filtering through the trees and into the car.
“This is going to be a great project” you say out loud. “The people are great, I know that I can help them, and I’m even getting prize winning produce thrown in as well”.
You are already imagining various possibilities, but first, there is a need to address the basic task at hand. There is a need for an information system to help customers to place an order and to then receive it. And there is also the issue of certification for “organically grown”.
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ACTIVITY 1
1. Use the background information to create a short summary (one short paragraph) about the “Natural-Lee”. 2. Create an organisation chart for the business. 3. Use the information above to describe the area of the organisation under study (i.e. the business functions that will be handled by the new information system). 4. Add the background information, organisation chart, and business functions to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.
There are examples of each of the things listed above in the text. However, make sure you do some other research. Use internet searches to find other examples and to look for examples that could use to help you construct the things you need.
CASE STUDY PART 2
At your first meeting, you and Wendy discussed some initial steps in planning an information system for the property. The next morning, you worked together on a business profile, and talked together about various types of information systems that could provide the best support for handling their customers’ needs, and mindful that there was a need to also track certification documentation to demonstrate the fully ‘organically produced’ nature of the farm produce. You also discussed the longer term plan to expand the operations of the farm to include farms that supplied fruit, which would also have to be demonstrated to be fully ‘organically produced’.
You start by creating a System Vision Document for “Natural-Lee”, so that Wendy can use this to define a vision for the new system and present this to Phil.
ACTIVITY 2
1. Either by yourself or with another class member, brainstorm all the functions that the “Natural-Lee” Information System might fulfil. Keep it at a very high level.
2. Prepare a draft System Vision Document for the Farm Information System. This System Vision Document will be revised when you find out more about the requirements for the system. An example System Vision Document can be seen in Figure 1.8 of the textbook (Figure 1.5 in the 6th ed).
3. Add your System Vision Document to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation.
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You have been given a little information about what is required but there are a lot of gaps. You are expected to fill these gaps to work out details and additional information that is needed. This also gives you some latitude to explore farming and their operations as they apply to your background and experience. Make sure you explore other vision documents and know how they are worded and what needs to be expressed in them so that an organisation knows where it is headed and what it is trying to achieve.