New app from Openfield interacts with Alexa

Grain marketing and arable inputs co-operative Openfield has unveiled a brand-new app, and an innovative way to interact with the smart speaker Alexa.

The new app includes many favourites from the company’s farmer portal, Insight, including access to contracts, loading schedules, Track My Truck, future prices, a handy chat function and the seed selector.

Accessible on a tablet or smartphone, farmers can view three years’ worth of account details, including movement periods, contract prices and tonnage.

The loading schedule brings up a smart way to view all planned collections, including variety, tonnage, timing and haulage contact details. This ensures all the information needed is available for each and every collection, helping farmers to plan their time much more effectively.

Track My Truck allows farmers to anticipate when a lorry, which is using Openfield’s tracking tool, is on its way to the farm. This feature allows growers to set email or text alerts, informing them of exactly how far away a collection is from their farm. This means that farmers can pinpoint where the driver is and ensure everything is ready to make the collection as quick and efficient as possible.

Farmers can also access the London wheat futures and send chat messages so the Openfield team can react quickly to any questions or information that is required by the farmer.

Openfield’s seed selector is another simple interactive tool. It enables farmers to select seed varieties by answering a few quick questions. The easy-to-use functionality reduces the stress of the seed selection process and helps farmers to identify varieties that meet their specific needs, Openfield says.

Alexa, Open Field Portal….

If the app isn’t enough, the Openfield team has also introduced a way for farmers to ask Alexa to access a number of the new app’s features. Alexa is now happy to tell farmers how the wheat futures are doing, what their Openfield Crop Fund value is and how their loading schedule is looking. There’s also a way to listen to any chat messages that have been received.

Michael Goodyear, head of IT at Openfield said; “Our in-house technology team has worked with farmers to deliver our innovative new app and a brand new way to interact with Openfield using Alexa. We’re proud of the depth of information available and we’re already working on some fantastic enhancements, including Price Alerts and a new Fertiliser Selector tool which will be added very soon.”

The Openfield App is now available to download from App Store or Google Play by searching for “Openfield Insight”. The Alexa skill can be accessed by downloading the Alexa App.