Donovan and Sophie took a sustainable approach to running their Taranaki dairy farm. Find out how they used innovative, cloud-based technology to create efficiencies and transform their business.
Transcript
[Donovan] For years, we were working in our business rather than working on our business.
[Sophie] Something had to give. A sustainable business to us means that we are able to incorporate our farm life, our home life, and all of our goals into one.
[Donovan] We've created a balance where we can spend time on ourselves and on our family, and for us, that's all about efficiency. We've learned now that better quality cows will allow us to produce more milk with less cows.
[Sophie] Technology is just amazing at being able to link us together. Xero has allowed us to have a great overview of where we're at physically in our business, and it's also helped us to have our trusted advisors involved in this in real time. The Xero for Farming package means that our accountants already have all of those actual numbers. There's less work for them and us.
[Donovan] We're able to use Figured to monitor actuals versus budget as we move throughout the season. We can pay our staff while we're out and about and Pay Sauce allows Tomas and I to be running a time sheet on our smartphones.
[Sophie] We're so fortunate to be able to farm the land here. A huge part of what we want to achieve going forwards is looking at that big picture and saying ‘How can what we do here on this small farm touch other people in a positive way?’