New stories are experienced daily at Agropecuaria Los Grobitos as a result of intelligently using technology to integrate end-to-end operations and provide the business with a new horizon for development and scalability.
It’s 6 p.m., and the workday is ending at La Indufina ranch in Carlos Casares. Alberto, the ranch hand on duty, logs the day’s updates on his mobile phone app: 17 cattle, averaging 170 kilos each, are being transported to the rearing field to begin the feedlot fattening stage. A notification sounds on José’s phone, the person in charge of the feedlot, informing him that the steers are on their way. At the same time, Natalia, the administration manager, receives a report automatically generated by the app and sent to her email.
Stories like these multiply and repeat daily at Agropecuaria Los Grobitos thanks to the intelligent use of technology to integrate operations end-to-end and provide the business with new growth and scalability opportunities.
Grobocopatel Hnos. was founded in 1967 as a family business by three brothers. It began as a company dedicated to producing and selling hay bales and forage, but when Jorge Grobocopatel joined in 1984, the company evolved to become a leader in the trading and storage of cereals and oilseeds. Today, it boasts a static capacity of 180,000 tons, with silo plants distributed in various locations throughout Buenos Aires province, providing it with logistical advantages to operate in the ports of Rosario, Bahía Blanca, and Necochea.
Context The company was preparing for a new stage of growth and expansion, while also confronting a challenge common in the livestock industry: most operations take place in rural areas with limited connectivity or access to communication infrastructure. The registration processes and communications between different sectors of the production chain were mostly manual and paper-dependent, which made them tedious, asynchronous, and highly fragmented in terms of information management and processing platforms. This situation, not unique to the livestock industry, leads to productivity issues due to the need for data transcription, risks to the accuracy of the information being handled, the necessity of generating manual reports, and, ultimately, delays or insufficient information for decision-making.
The challenge
Focusing on data integrity and process automation became an essential step for the company. With visibility throughout the entire cycle, integrating the entire value chain—from acquiring a unit to its sale—was key to ensuring the business’s sustainability and future projection. This meant that processes had to be executed faster, more accurately, and more consistently, allowing for increased productivity and enabling decisions to be made with the right information at the right time.
At Axonier, we worked alongside Grobocopatel Hnos. to bring this challenge to life, a challenge that involved not only digital transformation but also reworking ingrained practices to achieve efficient and sustainable processes.
The solution
This challenge required a quick and high-impact response. We developed a low-code, human-oriented app with a full business vision, based on Microsoft technology already in place at the company. This digital solution provides a solid and user-friendly platform to record buying and selling operations, track, and control livestock inventory. While collecting information from the entire value chain, it integrates all the players in the process and interacts with the company’s ERP system in real time.
The mobile version of the app allows offline functionality, automatically and instantly updating the system as soon as connectivity is restored, thus addressing one of the main challenges in rural areas. The solution also offers traceability: all operational data, which previously came from various sectors of the company and were fragmented across different spreadsheets and platforms, are now centralized in one place and can be viewed in dashboards. These dashboards serve as the foundation for analyzing and projecting the business.
The implementation process was simple and highly valuable for all stakeholders involved in the operation. The ease of adoption and the undeniable contribution to the business made it a strategic element soon after the project began.
The result
From the rural worker receiving livestock at the ranch to the sales manager planning dispatches, everyone is on the same platform with real-time information connected to the rest of the company—and the rest of the company connected with them.
For operations, this means simplicity and efficiency. Not only because of the reduction in manual errors and rework but also due to the user experience. As the app is highly intuitive, it can be easily expanded without additional effort, requiring no complex learning curve. For strategy and management, this solution equates to making decisions with the “right picture,” ensuring predictability for the business. With information dashboards built in PowerBI, immediate, fast, and accurate evaluation instances were enabled, facilitating decision-making.
