Software Solution Becomes Startup’s Secret Weapon

Article by: Hari Yellina

You generally tend to imagine people working on the soil with their hands, tools, and heavy machinery when you think about farming. Although data and analytics may not come to mind right away, AgriWebb is working hard to alter that. When AgriWebb arrived on the scene in 2014, the agricultural business was primed for change. In fact, as Director of Sales Josh Collins says, pencil and paper were their biggest competitors back then. However, as he points out, the world’s population is predicted to rise by three billion people in the next 30 years, necessitating a 50 percent increase in global food production. Moreover, that’s without adding to the amount of agriculture available, as we urgently need to halt and limit deforestation.

If we’re going to fulfil our emissions targets, we’ll have to reduce farming’s carbon footprint by 70% during the same time period. With a pencil and paper, that’s a lot to take on. Enter AgriWebb, an Australian internet firm that provides farmers with the information they need to make better decisions. Collins explains, “It’s about helping them minimise their carbon emissions while still helping them operate a lucrative business, to improve their rising output and our ability to feed a growing population.”

When Collins initially joined the AgriWebb team, one of the first things he did was look into using Aircall to digitise the company’s phone systems. “We came from a world where support employees shared a single phone and salespeople had their own phones, so there was no transparency,” he explains. “In a sales setting, you had to believe someone who stated they made 30 calls that day.” Of course, at a company whose bread and butter is data and analytics, this would never fly. Collins explains that they initially wanted to close the transparency gap.

Aircall: The Solution

Collins decided Aircall was the greatest VoIP (voice over internet protocol) product on the market for two reasons after doing some research. “For starters, they have a really strong platform,” he explains. “They just do it better than anyone else in terms of call dropouts, call quality, and the basic operation of a phone with data behind it that we can track.” “Then there’s the fact that they have the best habitat.” As a result, we’ve linked Salesforce with Intercom, Gong, and Snowflake, a data lake.” Aircall’s open API allows AgriWebb to draw data into Snowflake for even more detailed insights, in addition to its in-depth analytics capabilities. “We can get various statistics surrounding the type of conversations we’re having, who we’re having them with, and how much it costs to have them in Snowflake,” Collins adds.