Even a sector like farming, with its age-old traditions, can really benefit from digitization. The technologies available right now enable farmers to optimize irrigation, pest management, and fertilization using sensors and satellites; get the best out of their agricultural machinery; plan and monitor activities in a simple, efficient way; and improve their environmental sustainability. Digitizing the agribusiness sector is the mission of xFarm Technologies, the Swiss company that, in just a few years, has managed to secure a prominent role worldwide in the emerging AgriTech market.
Today more than 450,000 farms use the xFarm platform across more than 50 different agricultural disciplines. That adds up to a total cultivated area of over 7 million hectares in more than 100 countries worldwide. Those numbers reflect the strong growth achieved by the company since 2020, quadrupling its number of customers.
xFarm Technologies has relied on Slack and, since 2020, also Salesforce, to drive its growth. Slack has contributed by improving efficiency and productivity in all the company’s processes. “We have tripled the number of employees and opened various branches abroad; managing this growth without an effective collaboration platform would have been unsustainable,” remarked Francesco Mosciano, the Head of Operations at xFarm Technologies. “Slack was therefore essential in terms of scalability.”
Setting aside the growth in the number of subsidiaries, which has reached 177, many xFarm Technologies teams have reached their target of a 30% reduction in the number of in-person meetings through Slack.
With plans for more growth, it is more important than ever for xFarm Technologies to be able to rely on tools that improve efficiency in collaboration, automate work, and make it easier to gather and share knowledge. With Slack, xFarm Technologies can:
- Increase productivity by reducing the number of in-person meetings
- Easily share the minutes of meetings and projects
- Effectively monitor business opportunities
- Automate the ticketing system to improve the efficiency of customer support
- Interact productively with external partners
- Strengthen team cohesion through communication channels by providing light-hearted content
- Make all public information instantly available
- Ensure that managers have fast, immediate access to reports and dashboards
- Simplify the work of sales representatives through integration with Salesforce
“The main factor has been the ease of use, even when traveling, and accessibility via smartphones. Without a doubt, Slack is the most-used app on all our phones because it’s extremely simple.”
Facilitate collaboration through channels and meetings
A tech company that develops IT solutions already has in its DNA the right managerial approach and skills needed to choose the tools best suited to its own needs. And right from its very foundation in 2017, xFarm Technologies chose Slack.
“The company’s founders weren’t all concentrated in one place,” recalled Matteo Cunial, the Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder of xFarm Technologies, “so we needed to work in an ‘asynchronous’ way. We were all familiar with Slack from our previous professional experience, and it was a natural choice to make. The main factor,” continued Cunial, “has been ease of use, even when traveling, and accessibility via smartphones. Without a doubt, Slack is the most-used app on all our phones because it’s extremely simple.”
The three internal channels used the most by xFarm Technologies are the ones dedicated to sales activities (information about the entire sales cycle), technological activities (product updates, etc.), and operational support (support requests sent to the Head of Operations). This last channel is used, for example, to share explanations of how bugs, previously flagged in Jira, have been resolved. Using those explanations, the operational support teams can then be much quicker and more effective in responding to customers affected by bugs that have been resolved. Also very popular are the channels with light-hearted content, created specifically to build team spirit by sharing entertaining insights into business life. From unlikely business trips to family photos, or even updates on four-legged friends, these channels put the people who make up the company center stage, as well as helping xFarm Technologies spread its own corporate culture.
Collaboration is also simplified through the frequent use of Slack meetings, or “huddles,” which allow quick, immediate interaction, saving the wasted time that goes into planning meetings and coordinating multiple people’s diaries. The team also uses video clips, which, at times, provide a faster and more effective means of communication than a verbal explanation.
“Slack is like a digital copy of what goes on in business; like a public square where we try to centralize all the information, encouraging everyone to publish over public channels,” said Cunial. “For example, after every meeting with a customer, our sales agents publish the minutes on a dedicated Slack channel, tagging the relevant people, assigning actions, etc. This is a way to make sure the sales team – and the business as a whole – are on the same page regarding specific aspects that will need to be dealt with, and with the next steps.”
Slack at the center of every activity
Slack plays an important role in all xFarm Technologies’ activities. Among the main advantages is canvas, which consolidates all the information contained in exchanges between subsidiaries and interactions with external partners, transforming it into a unified knowledge base that is immediately accessible to all. “We log everything, so every bit of information can be found quickly and easily. We know everything is on Slack, so if we need information, that’s where we look,” said Cunial. From minutes of meetings to practical information for subsidiaries to the schematization of the most complex processes, every piece of information has its place in Slack, whether it is a canvas or a message in a dedicated channel.
The platform is also very useful for sharing technology across the company and for interactions between business units. “Slack is integrated with all the software tools used by our developers, such as Jira, Cypress, and Zapier,” Mosciano noted. “That helps connect our business units. For example, if a customer reports a bug or asks for a new function, the circle can be closed by informing the customer when the technical team has resolved the case.”
In addition, Slack Connect allows the company to manage collaboration with external partners productively and efficiently. One of the distinguishing features of xFarm Technologies is a range of solutions not only for farms (business to farmer), but also for the other actors in the agribusiness ecosystem: food industry, machine constructors, contractors, insurers, agronomists, bankers, etc. “Slack Connect is used extensively by the product and technology teams to interact with external European and American teams,” Cunial said.
“We know that everything’s in Slack, so if we need information, that’s where we look.”
Increase productivity with Sales Elevate
xFarm Technologies’ growth continues apace, thanks to competitive technology and a market that remains largely unexplored. “It’s estimated that, in Europe, digitized farms make up about 15% of the total, so that’s a good 85% of the market that has yet to digitize,” explained Cunial.
To make the most of these opportunities you need a productive and efficient organization. After adopting Salesforce and upgrading to Slack Business Plus, xFarm Technologies started using Sales Elevate, which allows native integration with Sales Cloud. Thanks to Sales Elevate, xFarm Technologies’ sales agents can now access Sales Cloud directly from within Slack: displaying and updating prospects from anywhere, creating custom alerts to simplify administrative activities and staying on track with targets, and defining key metrics to get detailed performance information for individuals and the team.
“Our main requirement was to simplify the work of our sales agents when entering information, once sales prospects had been created in Salesforce,” explained Cunial. “With Slack, it’s easier to enter that information. Every sales agent can see their list of prospects in Slack, and if they need to enter or update information about the sales process, they can quickly do it from Slack without having to go into Salesforce. We’ve also started integrating a number of reports to monitor sales activities.”
With Sales Elevate, the xFarm Technologies sales office can reduce the time spent on administrative tasks and be more productive in business development activities. At the same time, the solution gives the sales office the ability to produce reports that are accurate and up to date at all times, which can be used by managers to make targeted, timely decisions.
Prospects for growth and the future role of AI
In the immediate future, xFarm Technologies expects to see further growth, aiming at greater internationalization and collaboration with the big food businesses that want to improve their sustainability at the branch level. Slack and Salesforce will continue to play a key role in that journey. The business has already planned a further increase in the number of Slack licenses, which will rise to 200 by the end of 2024.
Future developments may include the use of AI: As a tech company, xFarm Technologies is conscious of the opportunity offered by AI and is ready to welcome it as a way of improving its own services further down the line. Nor is it ruling out the integration of further new tools with Slack or new workflow-based automations.
“We want to continue exploiting Slack’s advantages in all our processes. And we’re evaluating new solutions based on artificial intelligence, which in the future will certainly be more important for automating several processes in our business and will therefore become a competitive advantage. The Slack team has guided us and provided impeccable assistance over the years and we’re certain that the platform will continue to be an essential tool in our growth trajectory,” concluded Cunial.
