Hello everyone, and welcome to the first of a new series of SaaSam blog posts where we aim to bring you up to date on the world of CLM through our travels to various conferences and events!
Understanding the online and technical aspects of the market, of software, and of sales is all important to us, but something that we really prize is getting on the ground, getting to conferences, and getting amongst the people and the industries that use CLM (or could use CLM) to better their business lives. Face-to-face interactions are invaluable to us, and while it might sound a little old fashioned, there really isn’t anything like bringing a good product to a customer’s attention who might not have even thought about doing things in a different way or using Agiloft tools to provide best practice management for your Contract Lifecycle Management needs!
Sonja Pearson and Heather McEwen had the opportunity to get up close with what felt like the entire avocado industry at the World Avocado Congress in Auckland between April 3rd-5th, and it was an incredible experience. On a pure numbers level the event was huge: over 1000 attendees from 35 different countries all coming together in the Aotea Centre to discuss all things avocado.
Sonja Pearson showering some avocado specialists from Mexico and South America with smiles and gifts!
While we specialise in Agiloft Contract Lifecycle Management, we have expanded our solution capabilities into the world of horticulture previously with various clients including our friends at NZ Avocado (who we managed to meet up with at the congress). Our successes with NZ Avocado has shown us that the world of agribusiness can really benefit from smart, customised, CLM solutions, and our experiences at the 10th World Avocado Congress really cemented that idea.
We think this space is ripe (and we should know – we were close enough to give it a little squeeze) for more CLM adoption and for more CLM awareness - people we talked to at the conference were there primarily for avocado cultivation and research purposes, with a lot of the conversations being about the science behind avocado growth and the protection of specific avocado cultures and strains. As a result, we found that a lot of the attendees we interacted with were unaware of quite how wide-ranging the benefits of our kind of customisable CLM solution can be.
For example, for NZ Avocado we were able to:
- Iron out inefficiencies across the board by consolidating databases and ensuring that they communicate smoothly with one another.
- Assist with the integration and enhancement of the industry application Spray Diary.
- Include export registrations and NPA (non-propagation agreements, for those outside of the avocado-sphere) into their Agiloft system so that growers could register their orchards for packhouses and exporters while ensuring compliance to industry regulations and standards.
- Build an Agiloft system that acts as a smart central repository that reduces time spent, increases accuracy, and is flexible enough to accommodate future needs.
And if you want to read more about it, check out our case study here!
For each client the implementation needs and process will be different, but we believe there are so many opportunities and so many ways for horticulture and agribusiness to benefit from Agiloft CLM solutions that database consolidation and software integration is just the start!
Heather McEwen catches up with NZ Avocado's Brad Seibert at the World Avocado Congress. What a coincidence!
The sheer level of international presence at the WACNZ was humbling, and a genuinely great moment to be a part of in NZ. We don’t necessarily get large international conferences at the best of times, so it was incredible to be able to go to Auckland and participate in this event and we hope that all of our fellow conference attendees from overseas had such a good time here that they’ll think about coming back for more.
- C.R
