e.farmSMART May 2003



May 2003	Vol. 3 No.5

PORKSHOP.2003
WORLD PORK EXPO
DON'T FORGET YOUR CAP
SOUTH DAKOTA SUCCESS STORY, CHAPTER IX
SeRVware Q & A SECTION
CLIENT'S CORNER

PORKSHOP.2003 PREVIEW

The most important event of the year for professional pork producers has almost arrived!  Yes, we know that the World Pork Expo, coming June 5-7 in Des Moines, IA, will be a colossal event.  But the half-day prior to the Expo (June 4^th) promises to have the greatest impact on your bottom line.
    PORKSHOP has concentrated on the straight and narrow (and admittedly high!) road as compared to seminars catering to management levels of "average" producers.  If we're guilty of anything, it's overwhelming participants with new and challenging ideas.  So be it; we spend a year accumulating our clients' best ideas, those concepts are compressed into 7 hours and you have the next 12 months to put them into practice before the next PORKSHOP rolls around.
    Here is just a sampling of what you'll learn this year at PORKSHOP.2003.

• Strategies and tactics to ensure you are on the right side of history in the face of industry uncertainty

• The three plateaus of pork accounting and how to climb smoothly to the next level

• Why knowing the cost of performing support activities is as critical as knowing your final cost of production

• "Dynamic" responsibility center configuration techniques

• Standard Operating Procedures setup, posting and production entries

• Diagnostic practices to verify balances and allocations are accurate and complete

• Using Web-based technology for data collection and "high level" analysis

• The state-of-the-art of electronic animal identification and traceability

    In addition to FBS staff, these distinguished speakers will be contributing to this year's program:

Rick Sibbel, DVM, of Global Animal Management Inc. and president of the American Association of Swine Practitioners Tom Stein, DVM, Ph.D., designer of PigCHAMP and founder and C.E.O. of MetaFarms John McNutt, MBA, past president of the NPPC and consultant with Latta, Harris, Hanon & Penningroth, LLP

    Early registration deadline is Friday, May 30^th.  Contact FBS at 800.437.7638 or sales@fbsystems.com.  Click here for the full agenda.

IT'S WORLD PORK EXPO TIME!

If you're coming to the Expo in Des Moines June 5-7, please visit us at booth 756 in the beautiful, air-conditioned Varied Industries Building.

URGENT REMINDER: WHEN YOU RENEW TIMEsavr, DON'T FORGET EARLY-BIRD SAVINGS AND USE YOUR CAP CREDIT BEFORE IT EXPIRES!

All invoices for the 2003 TiMEsavr upgrades and support plan renewals have been mailed. Be sure to check yours for the colored coupon, which are good for a $20-$40 discount if redeemed with your payment by June 10, 2003. Also, if you remit by June 30, '03, you automatically receive a Client Appreciation Program (CAP) credit. Many of you already have a 40% credit "in the bank" that can be worth $400 for Crop Audit Plus, $600 for Smart Feeder, even $798 on the e.CLIPSE inventory valuation module. All CAP credits expire June 30, '03, so don't put off redeeming your valuable credit on any new FBS-authored module. So why not send your payment by June 10 to take advantage of both opportunities and save the most you can? If you have questions about CAP and the amount of credit you've accrued, contact your FBS sales representative at 800.437.7638 or sales@fbsystems.com.

SOUTH DAKOTA SUCCESS STORY, CHAPTER IX–JOREGENSEN FARMS AND FBS COLABORATE TO CREATE THE "MOTHER OF ALL REPORTS"

In the February issue of e.farmsmart, Jorgensen Farms controller Daryl Ellis described the challenges of cost accounting for the farm's numerous groups and classes of commercial bulls.  Because these groups—particularly leased animals—can remain "open" for so long, Ellis began working with FBS to develop a monitoring report that adjusts for group-level inventoried costs to provide management "real-time," rather than simply historic cost numbers.
    "Given the extended cycles for cattle, I was really struggling with the current Smart Feeder User Defined reports in providing meaningful & timely reports to management," says Ellis.  To solve this dilemma Ellis developed a prototype report in Excel and then presented it to the FBS development team.

Prototype of Feedlot Performance Monitor Report created in Excel.

    While most livestock reports are focused on "closeouts" or "accounting periods", this report would allow users to monitor inventory values by group on a user-defined, "time slice" basis, updated by "real-time" production and accounting entries.
    After two months of trial and error and testing via e-mail with Jorgensen Farms data, the report—dubbed by Ellis as the "Mother of All Reports"—was completed.

The commercial version of Feedlot Performance Monitor allows users to "slice" groups costs into time periods ranging from 1 to 365 days.

Applications

    With the inventory reconciliation feature within the Feedlot Performance Monitor report, Ellis has been able to summarize the timing of animal sales.  Jorgensen management made a concentrated effort to market a group of bulls earlier in the year.  As this chart shows, almost 80% of the group was marketed by January versus late spring in prior years.  The report shows the impact on group profitability by developing this earlier season bull market.

    "The Feedlot Performance Monitor report also shows the cumulative costs of reconditioning returning lease bulls.  Again, the report helps us identify whether the rental income offset the additional costs and 'animal fallout' during the reconditioning period", concludes Ellis.

Lessons

• Once an integrated system is in place, analysis possibilities are endless

• FBS is eager to foster well-defined collaborative efforts with clients

• Often one project creates "spin-off" applications in other fields, such as crops (Ellis also helped develop the new Crop Project Performance report) and pork (see graph below)

By monitoring costs by day or week, the Feedlot Performance Monitor can generate "real-time" production functions for pig, as well as cattle, groups.

Note: The Feedlot Performance Monitor's application to pork will be illustrated at the PORKSHOP.2003 seminar on June 4^th.

SOFTWARE Q&A – WITH Q'S FROM YOU, OUR CLIENTS!

Send us your questions/problems–be they short, long, simple or downright frustratin'!–about SeRVware and we'll handle them right "on the air" for the benefit of all. This month's question represents a "group" effort among four different clients.

Q.

I upgraded my PigCHAMP to version 4.10 and now it's not transferring data to Smart Feeder.  What happened, and how do I fix this?

a.

The PROMIS interface between the two programs is looking for a file called "FARMNAME.FBS," which is automatically created by PigCHAMP, but only if the "SETFBSIF' batch file has been launched after each PigCHAMP upgrade.  In addition, PigCHAMP, unlike FBS, creates a unique program directory for each version (PC407, PC410, etc.) which means that Smart Feeder needs to be pointed to the "new" PigCHAMP directory.  Here's how to make the corrections:

1. Launch the MSDOS or Command shortcut and get to the most recent PigCHAMP directory (i.e. C:\PC410).

2. Type "SETFBSIF" and press ENTER.  Four files should be copied.

3. In FBS go to Setup | Feeding | General Information.

4. Reset the PigCHAMP Link File Location to the new PigCHAMP directory.

5. Any entries or edits created in PigCHAMP after you switched versions and before the SETFBSIF batch file was launched will need to be entered manually in Smart Feeder.

Call in your questions (800.437.7638) or e-mail them to support@fbssystems.com.

CLIENT'S CORNER

•  In the News!

Roger Coon, president of the Iowa Premium Pork Co. board of directors, reports that the IPPC has launched the next phase of its quest to become a premier pork cooperative for independent hog producers in Iowa by offering an additional 1.8 million shares to hog producers and affiliated industry organizations.  For more information, click on: www.premiumpork.net .

Hord Livestock, Bucyrus, OH, is providing opportunities for a new generation of farm families through their contract grower program as described in the May 15th, 2003, edition of National Hog Farmer.  Read the full story, "Hogs Provide Second Family Income".

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