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Fairport Technologies News Historical FTI news articles and press releases
Download PDF - Get PDF Viewer hereSeptember 2004
IN THIS ISSUE
| Welcome |
Once again we welcome all our new Fairport clients and those of you reading your first Fairport News!
| Staff Matters |
In early August the Fairport team welcomed our new office administrator, Nicki van Gentevoort. Nicki is settling into the hectic office administrator job well and is enjoying meeting our clients on the telephone and in person as they visit our office.
Jodie Scott has left to join a company involved with event management here in Perth. We wish her well in her career and thank her for her efforts during her 2 years with us.[top]
| Rogers Ramblings |
The past three months have been no less hectic than the first six months of this year. Thankfully we are beginning to reap the benefits of our substantial R & D (Research and Development) efforts of the past six to eight months.
The highlights of recent months have mainly involved our continuing foray into the viticulture sector. The official launch of PAM AusVit was held at the Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference in Melbourne during the last week of July. A PAM AusVit workshop was conducted by Vincent Ball and Mick Lehman of Agricultural Resource Management with the assistance of our Joanne Richardson of Farmtek Australia.
I recently attended the New Zealand Romeo Bragato Wine Conference held this year at Blenheim in the beautiful Marlborough district of the South Island. This was a great event where Mark Ward representing Xenacom and John Kirkman of FarmIT had an exhibition booth. Interest in PAM and PocketPAM was intense and several sales were made or confirmed during the event.
From Blenheim I flew to Gisborne to discuss PAM Enterprise issues with a very large farming company running over 100,000 sheep and a lot of cattle as well. Then on to Hamilton to visit Gavin McEwen of Xenacom.
Fairport recently won the rights to commercialise the Victorian Department of Primary Industry’s and the GWRDC’s Grape Forecaster software. This yield estimating software involves both desktop and handheld software and will be officially launched in Mildura Victoria on October 26th. The Grape Forecaster system has involved many years of intense research and development by the viticultural scientists. I feel confident this new product will be very beneficial to the industry.
Since the last newsletter we have sadly bid farewell to Christo Helm who left his position as the manager of the precision farming division of Senwes (our distributors) in South Africa. Christo, who is now the African manager for KEE Technology. Christo and his wife Ronel visited Perth recently on his way through. Meanwhile Senwes has appointed Etienne Nel to step into Christo’s shoes.
Fairport’s international spread continues. Recently we appointed two dealerships in Chile and have made software sales of our FarmStar Lite software in Brazil.
We are proud to announce that our PAM AusVit system is attracting interest from some of Australia’s (and the world’s) biggest wine companies. Hardy Wines and De Bortoli Wines have or are in the process of implementing PAM AusVit across their entire Australian operation. Another major wine company is in the process of implementing in New Zealand, the USA and Australia. Other companies both here and in New Zealand are piloting PAM AusVit with a view to national or global implementation.
The PAM – Phoenix integration has had more attention lately and both parties are undergoing final testing. Apologies to all concerned for the time this has taken. The process proved to be far more complex than first envisaged. PAM versions with Phoenix integration will be released very soon.[top]
| Fairport Consulting |
As mentioned in previous Fairport Newsletters, our consulting division has worked on a large project for the Australian Agricultural Company (based in Brisbane) over the past 3-4 years. The project has almost drawn to a close now with AACo running PAM QA Plus on 27 cattle stations. Station managers are also using a newly created Livestock Budgeting system. Both of these programs “feed” data electronically to the extremely comprehensive head office system we have built for them called “LIS” – Livestock Information System. LIS is essentially a data collation and reporting system, generating critical and timely reports to ensure that AACo management have their finger on the pulse of their vast cattle operations. LIS also interfaces with the company’s accounting system.
Negotiations are under way to commercialise these powerful systems and we are looking forward to offering them to similar companies at some stage in the near future.[top]
| PAM Enterprise Edition |
We are soon to deliver the PAM Enterprise version to several of our clients. PAM Enterprise will enable much larger data sets than the PAM standard versions and can operate over wide area networks, being a true “Client-Server” type system.
Some information on PAM Enterprise solutions is available on our website. Pricing and a more comprehensive set of options are available upon request from Fairport.
[top]
| PAM Inventory |
PAM users who have upgraded recently may have discovered that certain behaviour in the handling of batch numbered items has changed. While it may now appear to behave “badly” (all batches which were previously ticked as totally consumed are reappearing), it is in fact behaving correctly.
Under the Tools menu you will find an option which enables you to mark totally consumed batch numbers. You can also now ask PAM to write special adjustment records to ensure the stock on hand value is zero.
For more help on this subject, please don’t hesitate to call us or visit the Fairport web site / Support / Help Files area.[top]
| Pastures from Space |
Pastures from space subscribers have been downloading their pasture growth rate data now since May. Apart from a few hiccups, things have been running very well.
It is still not too late to subscribe to the Pastures from Space service. Those planning to join next year should consider getting organised early in the year.
The pasture growth rate data is generated using satellite images and weather data and is delivered to subscribers through the Fairport Pasture Watch software on a paddock by paddock basis. This is done using paddock “polygons” drawn using either Pasture Watch’s mapping system, PAM’s mapping system or some other mapping software. It is very important that these paddock boundaries are drawn correctly. Paddocks incorrectly geo-located can result in you receiving pasture growth data that has been calculated for an area that is not even on your property! If you need help with this issue, please call Fairport or one of our dealer team.[top]
| PAM for Turf Management |
Thanks to the hard work of Booth Technology and Sports Turf Technology in Western Australia, PAM has become something of a standard in the Turf Farming industry in Australia.
If who know people in the turf farming or turf management industry, we would be pleased if you guided them to the Fairport website or to our distributors, for more information.
PAM users produce turf for venues as famous as the “Gabba” in Brisbane and Telstra Dome (or Docklands Stadium) in Melbourne.[top]
| MAX & MAX Pro News |
It is pleasing that many of our clients have taken advantage of the price drop for the MAX software (now AUD$199).
As MAX Pro is designed for the more demanding users (larger farming operations, city councils, trucking companies, mining companies, crane hire companies, tour coach operators and the like), MAX has found its niche on small to medium sized farms.
If your operation has a need for better machinery and vehicle (or any other asset) records … repairs and maintenance, service scheduling or just a good place to keep all those serial numbers, filter numbers etc. MAX at $199 is a simple choice.[top]
| Dealer News |
We recently had the pleasure of a face to face meeting with our “Star Performer” PAM dealer and agronomist, Tim Paramore from Albury NSW. Tim was in Perth with a tour group of farmers.
Paul Drendel of Drenko Business Support, Horsham, Victoria also called in briefly. Paul was on his homeward journey from Darwin
FarmTek Australia (VIC/SA)With the rain finally falling it now looks like we could be in for a reasonable season in Northern Victoria. It has been a busy couple of months with the Field Days in full swing. Thank you to all the people that called in to say hello at the Speed, Arye and Henty Field days. It is always a great opportunity to be able to discuss some of the new features of PAM, introduce some of our new products or just to go over a few ideas.
I have been receiving a lot of interest on Pasture Watch and the Pasture Budgeting. I am hoping to run some workshops on Pasture Watch and Pasture Budgeting in October and November. Details are yet to be confirmed.
PocketPAM continues to be very popular. It is a great way to keep your PAM data up to date and eliminates double handling of information.
FarmBIS funding for training in Victoria is now available and I have registered 2 courses for PAM training; On-Farm Individual and Group Training. To register your interested just fill out the online request at www.farmtek.com.auRoger and I will be attending the Grape Growers Conference (Viticulture 04) at Mildura 26-28 October. If you are in the area please drop in, Roger is always keen to get new ideas from our PAM users. Also a perfect opportunity to learn about our new products we have developed for the Viticulture Industry.
Regards, Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia ~ 1300 553 446[top]
PAM AusVit has hit the streets, and with it plenty of interest and new users.
We have been busy supporting people who have upgraded from the original CRCV AusVit - helping to move their data and setup the large variety of different weather stations out there. With all the features in PAM AusVit these new users have had a lot to explore and start to use. Existing PAM viticulture-specific users have been upgraded too, and appreciate the new features that are now part of PAM, especially the Viticultural Chemical Database.
We have also been demonstrating at as many Field Days as time allows - Mildura, McLaren Vale, Riverland and the big one - Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Technical Conference in Melbourne. The trade show was huge, and with over 2,000 delegates registered at the Conference our joint stand with CRCV was always busy over the 4 days.
Training is where everyone benefits - new ideas, new features and new methods help our users maximise their investment, and new ways of doing things helps to shorten the time in front of the computer, with more time to manage the farm / vineyard. But it is a valuable time for us to listen too - and we learn from existing users, when they do advanced training, how the PAM system is used in a wide range of enterprises - small to large.Two areas of PAM AusVit continue to attract new interest. The benefits of planning sprays and producing worksheets within PAM AusVit are easily appreciated, with the final advantage of having a formatted Spray Diary suitable for submitting to the Winery winning over even PC novices. And PocketPAM continues to generate interest - partly due to the ever increasing importance in Crop Monitoring driven by the industry focus on quality.
So we are looking forward to continuing to support our existing clients, and meeting many new people as the season gets underway after the long winter pruning.
Regards. Vincent Ball
Phone: 0412 39 29 19
Email: vball@serve-ag.com.au
Web: www.serve-ag.com.au[top]
We have had a great response to our PAM QA promotions during the field days at Dowerin, Newdegate and Mingenew. The winners of the PAM QA+ Multifarm software were John Jefferys (at the Dowerin Field Days), Geoff Richardson (at Newdegate), and Carolyn Malcolm of Morawa (at Mingenew)
We now have our multi-user training network set up and ready to go, so if anyone wants a group training session in their area we can run a “hands on” training course for up to 8 people in any location, contact Chris at our office if you are interested.Colin has just finished installing PAM Ausvit at Selwyn Vineyard Management for all their vineyard managers and technical officers. There are 11 users set up with simultaneous access to a server in Perth. Each manager can enter and review data at their own location, logging into the PAM AusVit system via the internet. Selwyn manages all the Evans & Tate vineyards along with consulting to several other growers.
Cape Mentelle of Margaret River has also just installed PAM AusVit and their training is underway.Chris and Stephen are busy doing “one on one” pre-harvest PAM training so if you want to get some training before harvest book in now.
[top]
Maelroan Computers
From the coach “somewhere in WA”.
Hello everyone. It was great to catch up with so many of you who visited us at the Newdegate Field Days to either arrange visits, purchase software and/or just to catch up. We even had great weather! We will be at the Esperance Show on 22nd and 23rd October. Do come and say hello.
Welcome to our new clients, it is a pleasure to add you to our valued client list.
As I sit and write this we are at Dalwallinu. By the time you receive this newsletter we will be back down southwards again. Our last trip up north will be in early November, so if you have not already made a booking, can you please do so soon? We have bookings for another trip up this way in March 2005 already, so again, if you want us to visit you, would you please let us know soon? It is easier to cancel a visit, than to add another in at the last minute.
It has been interesting visiting new areas to us north of Mukinbudin, through to east of Geraldton, and all areas in between. As farmers, it is always interesting to see how people run their farms in the different agricultural areas.
I have been doing quite a bit of QA work with clients who are, or wish to be SQF1000 certified growers. I am a Registered SQF Consultant, so am able to upgrade client’s current plans, or work with clients to develop new systems. This work goes hand in hand with paddock recording, which, for those who have PAM up and running fully, is a relatively seamless transition. For those who do not have it set up properly, it is not difficult to complete the configuration of your system to allow the program to supply almost all of your records for audit. If you like to keep your records on computer, it can save a lot of hand written records.
I will be out of the state for the week commencing 22nd November, attending a SQF Conference in Tasmania. I have to keep up to date with changes to the system, and how the world views “safe quality food”. Part of the theme for the conference is how can we use EMS (Environmental Management Systems) to our advantage in marketing our produce. In Australia we are looking to incorporate it with the current systems that clients already have.
By the time you receive this newsletter, we hope that you have had another good rain. Everywhere we go it is needed.[top]
| In Closing |
The Fairport Team wishes all our clients well as we rapidly draw 2004 to a close. We thank all of you for your support and patronage.
Until December…
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