AgriWebb Uses Zoom to Help Farmers Around the World

Australia-based AgriWebb’s mission is simple: deliver the digital future of agriculture. AgriWebb creates cloud-based farm management software to help thousands of farmers simplify their farm record keeping, solve their audit and accreditation needs, and make data-driven decisions about their businesses. While its primary customer base is in livestock and based in Australia, AgriWebb also serves farmers in New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

“We’re unique in that relatively few technology companies are tackling challenges in the agriculture space,” said Regan McGregor, Head of Marketing at AgriWebb. “Our software specifically helps farmers record livestock data, including stock movements and growth markers like an animal’s feed, projected weight gain, whether it’s grown sufficiently, etc. It’s incredibly important in Australia, which has a significant agriculture economy. By making more data-driven decisions, farmers can significantly increase their productivity and drive accredited food provenance.”

Building trust with customers

For a company like AgriWebb that aims to help farmers manage livestock in a country as massive as Australia, where the population is incredibly dispersed, numerous logistical obstacles can hinder its customer, partner, and prospect interactions. Jackson Lin, AgriWebb’s Head of IT, cited some of those challenges:

Its customers are all over: One of AgriWebb’s biggest challenges is how remote customers are, Lin said. “Most live in rural parts of the country, and it’s not feasible to see them all in person and it’s sometimes difficult to even get in touch because they’re in places with no mobile reception, low bandwidth, or only satellite internet.”

Which means its team is distributed: “We have a lot of staff on the road attending meetings and events and visiting customers, and having a reliable way to connect is critical for our team.”

And they all use disparate devices: “Technology isn’t necessarily the business of farmers. So they’ll use whichever browser is readily available. There’s no consistency across devices, and that creates a challenge for us to connect with them.”

But perhaps the biggest challenge, according to AgriWebb CEO Kevin Baum, is selling technology to customers in an industry where connectivity is a constant challenge.

“We’re in the 21st century and the first part of so many video calls or meeting conversations is ‘can you hear me?’ or ‘can you see my screen?’” Baum said. “AgriWebb is a technology company trying to sell technology to a rural business, and if we’re in a meeting with a prospect and it starts like that, they will not become an AgriWebb customer. It’s extremely important for us to have a reliable video conferencing service that builds trust right from the start.”

Zoom meets client device needs

To foster that trust and build a lasting partnership with its customers, the AgriWebb team uses the Zoom unified communications platform. AgriWebb had tried a number of video conferencing options to satisfy its needs, but the diverse nature of its customer base means system interoperability is non-negotiable.

“Nearly 100% of the reason we chose Zoom was because of our client needs,” Lin said. “Our customers use a variety of platforms, browsers, and devices when engaging us in video calls. Zoom has been the only video conferencing solution that has worked across our customer base, on every device, and every browser, including Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari.”

McGregor added: “Our biggest priority at the moment is growth, and Zoom is a mission-critical tool for our organization as we continue to grow and engage a larger customer base.”

And that growth is happening at a rapid clip. AgriWebb is signing on hundreds of farms a month, and while the organization already uses Zoom Meetings and Zoom Rooms, AgriWebb will be leveraging Zoom Webinars to streamline the onboarding and training process.

“We are about to start hosting Zoom Webinars sessions to help onboard and educate our customers more efficiently,” Lin said. “It’s just a fantastic solution.”

McGregor added: “Zoom Webinars works with our marketing automation tool, Salesforce Pardot. We can’t just up and change our tech stack, so we’d usually end up doing a bunch of third-party integrations. Zoom’s seamless integrations are just awesome.”

More meetings, more revenue

AgriWebb’s clients are almost exclusively in rural places, and with investors, partners, board members, and sales execs spread all over the world, Zoom is the next best thing to physically getting in front of those people. It’s why AgriWebb consolidated its Zoom licenses and deployed additional Zoom Rooms over the past few months, making meetings easier to join for all participants.

Lin and McGregor can cite the effects an expanded Zoom footprint has had on company growth. Its meetings have increased 4x in just three months, McGregor said, and for AgriWebb, additional meetings can often mean more revenue.

“AgriWebb is shifting the way products are typically delivered in agriculture, and Zoom is helping us to follow best-practice SaaS growth principles, such as web demos,” he said. “All of AgriWebb’s demos are done through Zoom, and successful demos of our SaaS platform, to have prospects actually see the product, are incredibly important for converting customers. If we don’t have Zoom to do this, we can’t connect with our customers.”

To learn more about AgriWebb, visit agriwebb.com.