Specialized ESE™ modules for agricultural cooperatives:
This powerful, flexible agricultural traceability solution allows the tracking of any agricultural value chain from the farm gate to the pack house via mobile phones, point of sale devices and other wireless units. Automating administrative tasks and data entry, the ESE Traceability Module offers cooperatives significant time and cost savings. The module records delivery and transaction data both entered manually into the mobile device as well from GPS, RFID and bar code readers. It then transmits the data from remote locations through any available network to the central offices of the agricultural cooperative via ESE™ Remote Software.
Stored on ESE™ Enterprise Server software, data from the ESE Traceability Module provides up-to-the-minute visibility into a cooperative's productivity, including crop quality issues in the field, and yield rate, productivity and product characteristics by farm. Powerful Web-based reporting capabilities, accessible anywhere in the world, include real-time statistics by geographical area, crop quality, producers and farms.
Highly configurable, the ESE Traceability Module can be adapted to any crop. Coffee producers, for example, can trace variables such as ripeness, green, mixed, conventional or organic beans. The ESE Agricultural Traceability Module also
Available at a low cost basis, the ESE Traceability Module provides a rapid return on investment.
The consolidated customizable certification schema in the ESE Certification Module are configured to the internal agricultural monitoring process of agricultural commodity firms, and cover major certification organizations such as Starbucks Café Practices, Organic, Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance. The module includes digital documentation and necessary e-forms covering key areas of certification.
Data is captured at the farm level, automating and streamlining complex certification data entry once performed at at an agricultural commodity company’s offices and providing substantial cost savings.
The most complete certification software available, the ESE Certification Module provides substantial cost and time savings to cooperatives, automating detailed administrative tasks in key certification service areas so cooperatives can turn their attention to their core business.
Our specialized, customizable application automates the capture of valuable information on the various light industrial processes of any agricultural commodity, saving considerable time and money.
For example, the ESE Agricultural Processing Module helps coffee companies by
Because many processes must be carried out on a 24/7 basis, automating data capture is essential to a consistent and reliable picture of the product quality. Once the ESE Agricultural Processing Module has captured data, it stores it securely and processes it to generate sophisticated, targeted reports. The process does away with inefficient, expensive, manual, paper-based record-keeping and greatly improves productivity for a rapid return on investment.
SourceTrace Systems offers the most powerful, complete and flexible transaction platform for agriculture. ESE™ for Agriculture modules work with other applications in the ESE platform suite to give agricultural commodity companies and cooperatives unprecedented flexibility, data recording automation and sophisticated reporting capabilities. Using mobile phones, and other off-the-shelf wireless handsets in combination with device- and back-end-agnostic ESE middleware, the ESE agriculture platform is both simple to deploy and remarkably cost-effective. Leveraging any existing wireless network, the platform is designed to function with any number of data sources across a global network. ESE for agriculture enables cooperatives to monitor deliveries and sales even across highly remote regions, and commodity firms to check their supply chain from field to processing centers, and from ship to warehouse.
Using the fully managed, ASP SourceTrace Back Office Server System or integrating with an organization's own back-end system, the ESE Enterprise Server connects to an unlimited number of remote handsets across many regions with accurate, visible, real-time data that agricultural cooperatives and commodity firms require.
The ESE suite consists of six applications. Every application is designed for low cost operation with a minimum of IT overhead, yet can easily be customized for the demands of any agricultural market or practice.
The volcanic soils and mild-high-altitude climate of Costa Rica's San
Marcos de Tarrazú region create near-perfect conditions for cultivating rich coffee with a
distinctive brightness. But because farmers had to travel long distances
across mountainous terrain to sell their crops, 228 growers founded the
Coopetarrazú cooperative in 1960 to process and sell coffee beans closer to
their farms. Since then, the farmer-owned enterprise has become a
2600-member, $16 million-a-year operation. Coopetarrazú's vision has
remained unchanged, however — providing the best tools and facilities to
meet the highest standards for producing quality coffee, while
maximizing income to members.
Coopetarrazú's processing plant, or guardiola, is the best in the Tarrazú region. It uses leading-edge technologies for coffee drying, hulling, sorting and shipping. Coopetarrazú's operations go beyond processing, however. It must track hundreds of thousands of coffee purchases from its members during the harvest and ensure that purchases meet certification criteria (including CAFÉ Practices, Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance) to fetch premium prices. For a technology solution that could meet these complex and divergent requirements, Coopetarrazú turned to SourceTrace Systems and its ESE™ for Agriculture applications.
Coopetarrazú's roll-out of SourceTrace technology has already begun to have an impact. The ESE™ Buying Station module is reducing data error rates and data entry and analysis costs, while improving information analysis. With the Buying Station module so efficient and easy to use, workers have become more productive and require less training and monitoring.
The cooperative is also deploying the ESE™ Certification module in a mission-critical role, reducing the time and costs of collecting farm-level certification data and generating certification reports for certifiers/verifiers who can access the information on their own websites.
The ESE™ Agricultural Industrial module is improving real-time monitoring/analysis of Coopetarrazú's mechanical drying process within the guardiola. By increasing the percentage of first quality coffee and reducing inferior grades, the Agricultural Industrial module is actually increasing the average price of the cooperative's coffee while it decreases the cost of managing the guardiola facility.
As the solution becomes fully deployed, Coopetarrazú expects that SourceTrace ESE applications will further improve the transparency of the coop's operations and the traceability of its supply chain. SourceTrace is also working with Coopetarrazú on incentive/loyalty programs and smart cards to increase membership, retain more present members and increase coffee deliveries within the coop. SourceTrace is currently developing a customized, web-based dashboard with Coopetarrazú management to provide visibility and analytics on metrics that are important to the coop.
Coopetarrazú is committed to producing superior coffee and providing for its members. With powerful, remote data technology that increases efficiency and visibility, SourceTrace Systems is committed to helping them do it.
