Bec Whittaker, Manager
I’m Bec Whittaker, I manage Ladycroft Orchard in the southwest of Western Australia. Ladycroft Orchard has been using ABCgrower since 2019, ABCquality and ABCspray for our chemical spraying and fertigation.
ABCgrower is very easy to use. It’s made a massive difference to what we do. Our supervisors out in the paddock can do the data straight away on their phone through the mobile app. We don’t have reception in the south of WA here in this particular spot, so for our guys to enter all of the data into the phones and then come up to the office and upload it, it’s all done. It allows us to see exactly what they’re doing in the blocks. So, any job we’re doing in the orchard is recorded – per tree, per block, per variety.
From a management perspective I can see where the staff are fluctuating through the day and through the week, and we can move them and change blocks. Then all of that information we can send in a report straight to our head office.
With our picking we can have location services on on the phone and it will show us how many bins as we tag them in the row, how many bins are picked in that area, and then that comes back onto a live product productivity map, so we can see who’s picked what out of what block, what row, and how many bins each row has produced for that season.
We use ABCgrower from the start of our new build, new plantings, and that will tell us ground preparation to irrigation going in, trees going in, tree guards going on, …fertiliser. Every little aspect of planting a tree is recorded onto ABCgrower and then given as a report at the end of the planting. We can see per hectare how much it’s cost for a particular block build.
It’s been a fantastic decision coming out of the paper trail and wanting to go paperless ourselves, click of a button, upload, and it’s all there.
Deidre Fagan, Office Manager
I find ABCgrower extremely useful. Before we started using ABCgrower it was mainly on paper, which was trying to chase down people for time sheets – paper time sheets. If I go on to check the pay run, I can verify if there’s anything missing it shows up straight away. It’s so easy for me, like if I work from home I can just click onto the computer. Definitely happy with the ABC program, it’s brilliant.
Bec: When we’re using ABCspray it’s very visual for anybody, for the tractor drivers, for myself. The sheets are done, I can email that sheet straight to the operator, they’ll know exactly what they want. On the sheet it tells you how much of a certain chemical to put into a full tank, a part tank, how much water that is required, so it’s all there easy to see.
When we do a stock take, instead of going out and spending 3 – 4 hours in the chemical shed writing down all of the product we just click a button and within five minutes it’s already printed out. Done! The sheet’s there. For us, as the chemical is delivered, fertiliser delivered, we put it straight into the system and all of that is visible to our quality assurance program. It eliminates human error.
Deidre: I definitely would recommend ABCgrower to other users just because it’s so simple.
Bec: The ABC crew are fantastic, there’s never any issue.
