Turners & Growers (MIS100 2012)

ICT budgets for Turners & Growers have remained consistent with last year. As the company transitions through its early 2012 takeover by Germany’s BayWa Aktiengesellschaf, IT will be used to “automate processes and further innovate where and when required”, says Martyn Seddon, general manager information systems.

Specifically, Seddon’s team of approximately 30 ITS staff will focus on providing more electronic interfaces, with the goal of reducing paper-based processing where possible, and supporting the on-going needs of the business and all of its divisions and subsidiaries—ENZA, Turners Domestic, Status, Floramax, Delica, Imports, Exports, TG Direct, KeriFresh and Turners Logistics — with a strong focus on its grower and customer base.

In March last year, Turners & Growers completed a speedy but significant deployment into Fiji: “We basically took sections of the domestic operation and deployed them into Fiji, all in the space of a month,” recalls Seddon.

This year, key IT projects in terms of budget and complexity will include further additions to the new online services for customers, general integration between business units and customers and the deployment of a new CRM solution. “With the introduction of CRM, we will extend our mobile technology so the sales teams can access customer data where and whenever they choose,” says Seddon.

Turners & Growers deployed a number of cloud based services, mainly in the HR area, to aid in speed of delivery and ease of integration during 2011. Moving forward, the organisation will investigate further cloud based products for business fit. Additionally, there are plans to upgrade investments in business intelligence, VoIP, business continuity/disaster recovery and e-business in 2012.