Clean Field Services (CFS) is committed to working with farmers to keep crops healthy and weed free. Crop care is constantly changing and weeds, insects, and regulations make it a challenge for farmers to keep their fields as clean as possible. CFS fills that need, and ensures that farmers have what they need.
A growing need for an ERP
What started in 2003 with one small self-propelled sprayer in the hands of Dennis Frey – a former dairy farmer himself – has grown significantly over the years as more and more farmers have come to rely on Dennis and his growing team.
Dennis, like most entrepreneurs, started out by tracking his finances and bills in QuickBooks. It worked, when CFS was small. But their growth soon started to put strains on their internal operations.
A core issue was that Dennis wasn’t able to easily identify trends from year to year. In order to do so, he needed to pull the profit-and-loss report for each individual year separately. He simply didn’t have the time.
“While Quickbooks did have the overall year to year P&L data, it was much harder to zoom in to a particular segment of the business” – Dennis Frey, Owner
Dennis switched Clean Field Services from using QuickBooks to EBMS, provided by Eagle Canada (a Canadian reseller of EBMS by Koble Systems).
Enhanced reporting for better decision making
With the robust reporting capabilities in EBMS Dennis quickly gained a much better idea of what was actually happening in his business. EBMS, for example, gave him the ability to compare the profit-and-loss of 8 consecutive years in one single report.
In fact, the reporting and ease of tracking information in EBMS was so fast and simple, Dennis’s suppliers would ask him how he was able to get back to them so quickly when they asked how much of their product he had sold that year.
“The EBMS folder system makes it easy to file & report various segments of the business, so everything is easy to pull when it’s needed.”
Tailoring the solution for their specific needs
The Eagle team also customized EBMS to fit some needs that were specific to Clean Field’s operations.
For example, Clean Field used to keep a binder in each of their sprayers with maps to track crop plans. But this manual, paper-based system was prone to errors, especially when farmers changed their plans. Spraying the wrong solution on a field because of an out-date map could be detrimental to a farmer’s harvest. Eagle’s EBMS solution replaced the binders with a task system, so that each equipment operator knew exactly what they’d be spraying that day and where, and it would always be up-to-date with the farmer’s plans.
“It’s always so easy to work with the Eagle Canada team. My contact for day-to-day support knows my business well and is able to address things quickly. I’m not just calling into a call center that treats me like a number.”
For example, Clean Field needed to open up a new warehouse location for a short period of time. Dennis was able to work with Eagle Canada to add the functionality to manage a new warehouse, and then was able to pull that back when it wasn’t needed anymore.
Throughout the next years of their growth, Dennis continued to lean into the support he had with Eagle Canada. For a period of time, Clean Field was seeing 20% year-over-year average growth, which meant Dennis was continually scaling how he used the system.
A strong partnership for continued growth
As they look to the future and taking their product online to serve an entirely new market beyond their current customer base, Dennis is confident that EBMS and Eagle Canada will be able to support their growth and development.
“It’s exciting to see we could grow for a long time and Eagle will continue to meet our needs. It can be painful to switch software, so we’re glad that the software we chose grows with us.”
Kelsey Stout is the Head of HR & Marketing at Koble. She loves helping people build strong and lasting businesses with meaningful work, the right systems in place, and a strong approach to culture. When not telling Koble stories, Kelsey can be found writing children's fiction, spending time with family, or playing the guitar (poorly but enthusiastically).
