Growing conditions can be unreliable, your tech shouldn’t be

The farming industry is becoming increasingly automated to cope with growing scales of operation to meet the demands of the 21^st century – stemming from the machinery you’re using to speed up agricultural processes to managing livestock more reliably. One instance of this is using the cloud to store your business’s data, which allows your teams to access it anywhere, from any device, including everything from a laptop or smartphone to a tractor.

In addition to this, management systems can be updated for everyone at the same time, so you can ensure you are all working from the same song sheet. Without being bogged down by delays in transferring data, you free up more time for your team to work on what you hired them to do. Making the way your business fundamentally communicates more streamlined and efficient means that you put yourself in a stronger position to focus on your strategic objectives and materialise business growth.

Through Intercity’s work with Burgess Farms, the company says it has first-hand experience in closely assisting a multi-site transition to the cloud within the farming industry, and the benefits that can be reaped. Intercity has put together a case study of its partnership with Burgess Farms to help farmers see how others in the industry are utilising tech to secure and streamline their businesses.

Burgess Farms case study

Burgess Farms is a family-owned business based in Peterborough, producing vegetables including potatoes, parsnips, beetroot and garlic. It supplies several well-known UK high-street supermarkets. Founded in 1898, it has expanded using strong ethical values and today remains a privately owned business with active involvement from the fourth generation of the Burgess family. With roots as far back as the cusp of the 20^th century, Burgess Farms is no stranger to the need to adapt and evolve in order to keep up with changing societies and technological advancements to maintain a competitive edge.

Intercity’s relationship with Burgess Farms began in 2021 when its head of IT, Gary Ingham, began looking into companies that would not only improve the farming business’s IT infrastructure, but also assist in the transition and development. The first phase of the project was to migrate Burgess Farms to Intercity’s private cloud, which was a top priority. Burgess Farms had considered but decided against using public cloud, as it would still be their responsibility to set up and maintain.

Furthermore, Intercity’s private cloud offers increased security that keeps Burgess Farms’ data from being shared outside of their business. Using Intercity’s private cloud, with primary resources hosted in its Birmingham data centre, was therefore an ideal solution. The business was able to avoid the costs of hosting and powering the infrastructure themselves, but still benefit from everything the cloud had to offer. Intercity migrated Burgess Farms’ existing virtual machines, stood them up, with backup to Intercity’s Bolton data centre, and set up disaster recovery in line with Burgess Farms’ requirements for Recovery Point Objective (backup interval) and Recovery Time Objective (disaster recovery).

The second priority for Burgess Farms was to move their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. As the beating heart and interconnected brain of their operations, Burgess Farms needed to upscale their ERP—but could not afford any downtime. Like many specialist business applications, their ERP had no SaaS equivalent, and was dependent on a fast client running on Citrix terminals.

Intercity was on board to manage the transition, adding the required capacity and successfully migrating the ERP, completing in time for the change freeze required by Burgess Farms as the growing season began. Intercity says it knows how difficult it can be to warrant changes to your systems during peak seasons, however delaying the migration means putting off the advantages that cloud computing can offer to your business. Working with an experienced partner also means there will be a reduced impact to your operations as the company says it is practised in making the migration as seamless as possible.

From Gary’s perspective, while the transition was daunting, with Intercity working closely and honestly with Burgess Farms they felt supported and in control.

“We were nervous about moving our ERP away from our premises. Without ERP, our business would grind to a halt. But as we saw how Intercity progressed with the Citrix migration, keeping us informed along the way, ironing out any unexpected bumps as they went along, it gave us the confidence to entrust them with hosting our ERP.”

Your IT should be the cream of the crop

Working in the farming industry, you’ll know that careful planning leads to a better yield. If you sow the seeds of investing in your technology now, you’ll harvest quality output in your operations. There will be less risk to your systems going down, so your ability to distribute your products and monitor the storage of your goods—as well as your data—will be uninterrupted. Your IT is critical to making your business robust and resilient even when circumstances out of your control are not as predictable, from the weather affecting your farms, to the war in Ukraine affecting your methods of distribution.

Check out Intercity’s full video case study with Burgess Farms here to see how the company is enabling businesses, like yours, to do more.