Achieving 80% Time Savings in Contract Processing with Digital Solutions

Achieving 80% Time Savings in Contract Processing with Digital Solutions

Overview

Farmer Agreements Module

While collaborating with VST Industries, we recognized the necessity to streamline their process for signing agreements with farmers. Annually, they enter into agreements with their fleet of 30,000 farmers, which consumes significant human and time resources. To address this, we developed the ‘Farmer Agreement Module’ for FoodSign, enabling efficient agreement signing within the FoodSign ecosystem.

Overview

Enhancing agricultural efficiency

This case study was conducted over a three-month period, culminating in Aug 2023. It encapsulates a transformative journey in agricultural agreement management, detailing the development and implementation of the Farmer Agreement Module. Expect insights into the design process, the challenges overcome, and the tangible benefits realized by VST and its network of farmers.

The Problem

Scaling

VST Industries, originally known as Vazir Sultan Tobacco Company, was established on November 10, 1930. With a rich history rooted in Hyderabad, India, VST has grown into a prominent name in the tobacco export industry.

Despite its extensive organizational network, inclusive of administrative personnel, field officers, and support staff, VST faced significant challenges in efficiently managing its vast cohort of over 30,000 farmers, particularly with nearly 10,000 actively engaged in any given crop year.
The Problem

Inefficiency & Risks

  • Using physical documents often led to delays in processing and communication resulting in a backlog of pending documents to be signed from previous years.
  • Manual data entry was vulnerable to errors, which lead to inaccuracies in records adding more delays in the timeline.
  • Storing and organizing physical documents required physical space and manual effort with management & filtering concerns. This also increased turn around times between organization and farmers.
  • As VST was expanding, managing an increasing number of farmers was becoming cumbersome.
  • Client also expressed few instances of loss and damage of documents.
  • Though there were environment concerns, but they were not the driving force.

Avg time / agreement

~48 Hrs

approx ctc

20 Lakh

spillover phase

3 Months

Constraints

User Roles, Permissions & Business Flows

Maker Checker

The client requirement was that whenever the agreement was filled, it should not be automatically approved but the key fields should be manually by the technician to check and verify the agreement records.

Who does what?

The client had an established framework with predefined roles and responsibilities, including clear guidelines for information accessibility and the ability to view, modify, and approve documents.

Automated Farmer Status Change

Depending on which agreement was signed by the farmer, there was an automation done. This automation led to quick custom fields allocation for the farmer status.

Number of Active Agreements

The client requirement was that at any any given point of time, any farmer in the entire database should have only one active agreement in the entire list of active agreements.

Network Availability

This entire system should be operational in the offline mode as well because the target audience is residing in tier 2 and tier 3 cities with limited network coverage.

Operational Restraints

Depending on the respective agreement custom fields, the communication aspects in regards to a particular farmer should be limited.

what does success look like?

Everybody wants to win, here’s how we defined success

Rate of Onboarding Farmers

Our goal is to streamline the onboarding process using the new stack, leading to significantly reduced time and enabling quick farmer onboarding.

Number of errors/1000 agreements

Our objective is to achieve a minimal error rate of < 1%, in contrast to the 10-15% error rate associated with the physical signature format.

Ability to Draw Analytics

Our objective is to enhance the digitized stack, making it easier to retrieve diverse analytical reports and derive meaningful conclusions.

Solutions

Agreement Template Designer

User Type

Organisation Admin

Impact

The organization admin with the guidance from our implementation team, was able to define agreement templates to be used across the organization

Dynamic Tags Config

Gives you option to dynamically add system data fields or add custom fields

Rich Text Editor

Easily edit agreements with all the word document functionalities

Easy Insertion of Tags

Easily search from the list of dynamic tags and insert them as you draft the agreement template without breaking the flow.

System Data Tags

Preconfigured set of fields that allow the user to dynamically fetch data from the database and allow overriding wherever required.

Define additional Custom Fields

Custom fields supports various options including text, radio, dropdown. Special emphasis was given on the custom dropdown options where the custom parameters and their respective units can be easily added.

Solutions

Mobile Agreement Creation

User Type

Field Technician

Impact

The User can easily create agreements against farmers

Select Agreement Type

Depending on the configuration, all necessary input fields are listed. System data are auto-filled and the user can enter the additional fields as required.

Name & ID

The Agreement Name and Agreement ID will be automatically generated each time. It can be either random or follow a nomenclature configuration set by the administrator.

Define variables

All defined variable are listed, with system fields and custom fields grouped. System data is auto-filled, and users can enter additional fields as required. System fields can be overridden if enabled in the template configuration.

Preview

A quick preview of the filled document. Users can then proceed to sign the document or go back to change the values.

Signature Canvas

Field personnel can electronically capture a farmer’s signature using a stylus or their finger directly on the device screen.

Solutions

Organisation Agreement Manager

User Type

Clerical/ Admin Staff

Impact

Admin staff can easily monitor and manage all the submitted agreements, verify and proceed with the due diligence.

Agreement Filters

Effortlessly navigate through all the agreements using quick filters and export the filtered view according to your convenience.

Association Select

Organize the agreements using a tree dropdown, following the defined hierarchy, to process them in manageable chunks.

Date Range

Filter agreements based on the creation date

Farmer Filters

Filter all the active agreements of a single farmer

Agreement data overview & modify

The staff/ clerk at the backend can edit and modify the data in the left panel

Status Water-mark

Print Preview option includes the watermark on the agreement with its respective status.

Action items on agreement

The preview gives the next set of action items for the agreement
Outcome

Here’s what really happened

May 2023 ~ August 2023

Since the solution implementation, VST was able to achieve a remarkable feat of 11,800+ agreements signed and active within a span of 3 months, which used to take up a whole year.

Advanced Analytics

Now, VST is able to draw meticulous analytics including the agreement and connected ERP data which helps them drive business decisions in an informed way.
Cheers!

thnak yu!

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