9 Best Agriculture ERP Software in 2019

What is Agriculture ERP Software?

Agriculture ERP software helps in managing day-to-day activities concerning agriculture field and farmers. It facilitates crop health monitoring, quality check of crops, farm to fork traceability, distribution management and more. It takes into account various factors pertaining to agriculture such as soil quality, weather forecast, and pest infestation ensuring better yield and sale efficiency. In other words, agriculture ERP is an all-in-one solution that helps you streamline all the tasks, right from sowing seeds to selling crops.

Who needs ERP Software For Agriculture?

Various business owners in the market count on agriculture ERP software to run their businesses effectively & efficiently, such as:

• Agricultural Companies need agriculture software for real-time visibility of farm activities, weather analytics and quality control.
• Agri Input Companies can make the most of their agriculture inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, manure, and maximize sales efficiency with this software.
• Seed Production Companies: The proposed software helps such companies in seed quality management, crop health monitoring, yield prediction, etc.
• Financial Lending Institutions: Financial companies give loans, and they need to do a credit risk assessment for the same. They need to predict weather, yield and more for the purpose of lending. And, the agriculture ERP software can come handy. Using the software, the harvest cycle can be tracked to recover payment on a crop performance basis.
• Government & Advisories: The software is used to maintain a proper record of farms & farmers. Its advisory module is used to predict weather conditions and find out if crops are prone to pest attack & diseases. Moreover, agriculture ERP software ensures that healthy agriculture practices are followed.

Why you need ERP For Agriculture?

Agriculture ERP software plays a significant role in executing agriculture farm-related activities seamlessly. It determines how farmer related data will be organized, resources will be allocated and tasks will be performed. The area under cultivation cannot be increased.  The best option is to enhance productivity. The agriculture ERP system enables that by facilitating optimum utilization of employed resources. The respective software ensures that crops do not lie idle in a warehouse and thereby, it supports the improved distribution of crops across the supply chain. Therefore, from farm to fork, agriculture management software helps at every stage.

Modules of Agriculture ERP Software

Agriculture software comes with some essential modules that enable agriculture associated companies to monitor crop production and optimize yield with the following modules:

• Delivery Management: Same as supply, agriculture management software optimizes the delivery process as well by automating it. Delivery orders related to crops, seeds, fertilizers, machines and other agriculture tools are accepted automatically, ensuring that customers receive the same on time. Respective software also optimizes the transport route for quick delivery.
• Finance and Account Management: This module of agriculture ERP system can help you manage all your financial and accounting tasks. It facilitates the management of accounts for all your branches from a centralized location. Since account records are maintained at one place, allocating expense and capital investment to each crop production becomes easy. Further, due date alarms ensure that you never miss your payments.
• Climate Advisory: Agriculture ERP software provides you with weather forecast on an hourly basis as well as for coming week and months. This module proves to be helpful as you can plan crop production, irrigation, and harvest accordingly. Moreover, if you need to take any precautions on the basis of weather predictions that can also be done. For instance, due to heavy rainfall prediction, you can move your stock to a more safer place.
• Farmer Information Management: This module helps in managing everything related to farmers including their personal information, type & quantity of land they hold, credit they have taken, loan dues, etc. It also covers livestock and cattle owned. Data related to the quality of soil on the farmer’s field, irrigation facility availed and pre-harvesting requirements from each farmer are also maintained using this software.
• Report & Analysis: A lot of data is captured using agriculture software, and it can be used to generate insightful reports based on various categories. Reports can be created on the basis of input utilization, sales, purchase, crop scouting, and weather. You can also use charts and graphs for making reports more presentable and conduct quick analysis.
• Farm Worker Management: A lot of seasonal work is done in the agriculture industry. Using this module, you can keep a tab on seasonal workers. It will help you in efficient management of payment to be made to such workers and other costs associated with them.

Features of Agriculture ERP Software

Agriculture software is a feature-rich software that enables smart farming and helps in accelerating your business to new heights.

• Crop Health Monitoring: Agriculture ERP software helps in identifying nutrient deficiencies and other defects in soil used for growing crops. Software algorithms conduct analysis after taking into consideration certain soil defects, pest infestation, diseases, etc. After concluding, a soil health card is issued, and also, suggestions are given regarding crops that can be grown in respective soil.
• Field History: Agriculture software helps you in keeping farm data and records in one place. You can have complete details related to vegetation, soil condition, precipitation, and weather history. Also, you will have complete information about all those people to whom the land has been transferred. In other words, you know everything about the elements associated with a particular agriculture land.
• Real-time Visibility of Farm Activities: You can track farm activities in real-time using agriculture ERP solution. Satellite-based geotagging provides you with real-time updates about various stages of crops. From receiving agriculture machinery & other equipment to sowing seeds, irrigation, harvesting, storage, and selling of crops, you can track every detail with the respective software.
• Compliance & Certification: Agro companies should adhere to compliance, new regulations, norms or protocols regarding maintaining the quality of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides used. Agriculture ERP system facilitates quality control management by keeping you updated regarding certified inputs.
• Agriculture Machinery Fleet Management: Agriculture management software is not just about crop handling and maintenance. It assists in everything that is associated with ploughing, planting and harvesting the crops, including farm equipment and agriculture machinery. It helps you keep a tab on their working condition and cost.

Benefits of Agriculture ERP Software

You get lots of on-field and off-field benefits while using agriculture ERP solution, such as:

• Enhance Productivity: As discussed previously, an area under cultivation can’t be increased, therefore, the best option is to increase the productivity of agriculture land you have. ERP software helps in increasing productivity by ensuring employed resources are used in an optimum manner. For instance, more pesticides are allotted for a field if it is more prone to pests. Similarly, if weather forecast predicts rainfall, then irrigation facility can be modified.
• Effective Inventory Management: Agriculture software can be used not only for finance and accounting purpose but to manage inventory as well. It ensures that crops aren’t wasted by lying idle in the warehouse for an extended period. You get real-time inventory status for each of your warehouses, there are no more low inventory bottlenecks, and your operations run in a hassle-free manner.
• Improved Distribution: Purchasing, storing, and moving of inventory is done in an organized manner and as per schedule. Agriculture ERP software enables on-time delivery by improving the distribution system across the supply chain. Therefore, the business enjoys smooth cash flow and improved profit levels.
• Better Decision Making: You get a holistic view of all the verticals of an agriculture field on a single platform. It helps you plan tasks efficiently, track inventory in real-time and make better decisions. It suggests you how crop-related activities can be undertaken, pest control measures to be applied, fertilizers suitable to use as per certification.  

Buy Agriculture Software

There is plenty of agriculture software companies in India that provide with proposed solution. Before you go for one of them, consider the following factors:

Features

This is one of the critical factors to consider because a software that cannot perform the required functions will serve no purpose for you. Therefore, before deciding between different agriculture software to purchase, identify your business requirement and sort out which features you need to perform farm activities effectively.

Easy-To-Use

The process of deploying agriculture ERP software should not be painful. It should be easy to integrate with an existing system with a user-friendly interface. The software is purchased to automate tasks, ease the workflow and lose the burden. However, any software that is difficult to use will only make you lose your time.

Training

No matter how simple a software is, but you still need basic training to use it. Training can be face-to-face or in a remote manner, depending on the vendor. Also, you must be provided with training manual for future purpose.

Scalable

Agriculture ERP software should be such that it lets you scale up (and down) as per your business requirements. For instance, if you buy more agriculture land or need more farmers in the future, the software should be flexible enough to update your requirements.

Integration

This is another crucial factor to consider as you may not find all the features in one software or you may have existing software for certain purposes. For example, if you already use HRMS software then instead of spending money on this feature, you can go for system integration.

Here is the list of top agriculture ERP software

• CropIn SmartFarm
• Assyst PanAgro
• Satya Farmer Information Management System
• Krisol ERP
• Dataman Aahar
• Agriculture Solution on Tally