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.
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.
Scaling
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Status Water-mark
Action items on agreement
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
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