Dear Friend,
Hope springs eternal for your favorite "field of dreams" regardless of whether it adjoins your farmstead or is located at the intersection of Addison and Clark in Chicago. Crops around here are off to almost as an amazing start as the Cubbies, but both seasons have a long way to go before the "payoff" in October and November.
Meanwhile, in this month's FarmSmart:
- Connect 'i6 FBS User Conference preview.
- Keynote speaker brings corporate insight to the farm.
- Data mining workshop.
- FBS users in the news.
- June free webinar schedule.
- Link to recorded webinars.
- Data systems analysis. SDG
Join us for 2016's best opportunity to fine-tune your management and accounting efficiency and effectiveness: the FBS User Conference. This year's theme,"Innovate, Integrate and Interrelate," will feature a new format to enhance the sharing of ideas and gaining of practical experience. New features include:
- Pre-conference Data Mining Workshop (see story below)
- Applying best practices from manufacturing (see story below)
- "Pop-up" user groups based on specific interests
- Representatives from technology companies that integrate with FBS
- New dates that don't overlap the Farm Progress Show
Along with the new we will continue these
popular features:
- Access the latest crop and pork cost of production benchmarks
- Choose your favorite software and accounting topics at the breakout training sessions
- Select one, two or three-day registration packages
- Enjoy the rustic ambiance of the Stoney Creek Inn on the Mississippi Riverfront
- Network and relax on the Celebration Belle prime rib dinner cruise
Click here to go to Connect 'i6 website website to pre-register, reserve your hotel room or select your preferred topics.
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| Kent Mogler |
U.C. Keynote Speaker Adapts Corporate Best Management Practices to Family Farm
No matter where you're contributing to the food value chain, you're in the manufacturing business. Farmers "assemble" crops from raw materials and work in process (with plenty of help from God). Livestock producers add value to those crops by converting them into unprocessed protein sources. Grain and meat processors transform those farm commodities into branded products that meet tight quality specifications for customers.
Our User Conference keynote speaker, Kent Mogler, has thrived in every segment of the food value chain, including a 26-year career at General Mills in manufacturing, finance & IT roles; and 7 years as COO of a meat processing company (WW Johnson Meat Co.). In the past 2 years he as concentrated in manufacturing consulting and engaged as Consulting CFO with his family farm operation (Pig Hill Co / Mogler Farms, a third and fourth generation livestock and grain operation in northwest Iowa in its fourth year of using FBS) .
Kent has led operational system implementations at both General Mills (SAP) and WW Johnson Meats (MS NAV) and has applied lean manufacturing practices(Toyota Production Systems) at the operational level (production teams / team leads / office practices). He concentrates on delivering value through timely, actionable, user relevant KPIs (key performance indicators).
The title of Kent's presentation is "Applying Lean Manufacturing Processes to your Operational Decisions, Farm Accounting and Analysis Reporting."
Pre-Conference Data Mining Workshop
You've accumulated a vast quantity of data within FBS. Now it's time to generate meaningful reports and analysis so we're offering an hands-on Data Mining Workshop beginning at 1:00 pm, Monday, August 22nd, one day prior to the FBS User Conference. This will be an intensive session in which you will working with your own data files, and will be limited to the first 15 companies that enroll. Topics included:
- Financial statements--report level, template and column options
- Crop and Feeding Cost Analysis--templates and column options
- Consolidated Cost Analysis--mastering the "monster"
- Drilling into the Standard Cost/Vendor Monitor Report
- Smart Feeder User-Defined Reports
- Adding graphs to FBS reports
- TransActon Plus User-Defined Report
- Utilizing the "audit trail" data fields
- Creating "pivot tables"
- Exporting to Excel
- Unlocking the power of Report Generator
- Automated batch reporting
Click
here to register online.
Connect 'i6 FBS User Conference at a Glance
FBS Users in the News
In the Farm Journal story, "Protect, Safeguard Data," Indiana farmer and former state Farm Bureau president Don Villwock identifies two new data programs aimed at validating data ownership, usage and control. The Agricultural Data Transparency Evaluator was created by the American Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union, the National Corn Growers, the American Soybean Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers and the National Sorghum Producers and issues a "Good Housekeeping Seal" to data companies that comply with its standards. The Agricultural Data Coalition, on the other hand, is a partnership between commercial companies and Land Grant universities with the Ag Data Coalition with the "mission focused on designing, creating and managing a central repository where farmers can store their information and oversee how it is accessed."
Congratulations to Iowa pork producers Todd and Denise Wiley, who received the Gary Wergin Good Farm Neighbor Award in March.
Summer Events Calendar
Click on the event logo to go to that organization's website.
June Free Webinars
June 6: Basic Smart Feeder entries.
June 27: Making and restoring backups, checking for updates.
All webinars run between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm CDT.
NEW: Catch up on the webinars you've missed by watching them on the Webinar page of our website.
Q&A of the Month: Do You Know What You Don't Know?
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| Sarah Dixon, FBS Sales and Support Coordinator |
Q. Do you know what you don’t know? You collect data from everywhere: invoices, equipment, packers, mills, etc. You or your employees spend a large amount of time entering that collected data; so is it worth your time? Are you getting your data combined and compiled into a useful format? How do you effectively and efficiently capture that data into a usable format that you can report on and make decisions with?
A. Everyone can be more efficient in their data input and reporting; let us help you identify key areas you can optimize! We are performing Data Systems Analysis for our clients. Schedule your analysis and we will ask you a series of questions that will look in-depth into your data collection system. From employee to software and apps we will look at how your data gets into FBS and then how you retrieve your data from FBS.
We will schedule a time with you for the analysis. It will be a phone conversation that will last approximately an hour. After that the FBS staff will review the answers and suggest ways you can optimize the FBS modules you already have. Our analysis might suggest additional resources as well. For a limited time we will be offering this valuable service free of charge.
We hope this services will help you utilize the investment you have already made in software and employees. To schedule your Data Systems Analysis, you can call Sarah at 800-437-7638 x 100 or click on this link to request an analysis!
Pre-Conference Data Mining Workshop
