CattleLog

Taking herd management from guessing to having profit/loss reporting for every animal

UXUI / DEV / STRATEGY
Agriculture
Business Application

Challenge

AAA Farms is a registered Angus cattle farm. With a large and growing herd, the ability to manage animals, track breeding, and get accurate financial reporting was becoming increasingly difficult. They were using pen and paper to make notes while out on the farm and then transcribing to spreadsheets and Quickbooks. Multiple places to record data creates extra effort with unnecessary redundancy along with the increased potential for inaccuracy.

Our discovery phase allowed us to map out the requirements for an MVP platform. This aligned the entire team with the goals of the project so there were fewer surprises.

Approach

Next up, we created rough sketches to get a feel for the possible workflow. The sketches quickly lead to wireframes that we tested with real users. Our primary objective was to ensure that connections between animals were always visible and could be cross-referenced from anywhere in the app. We also focused on creating the ability to record all profit/expense data in context. After each user testing session, we considered their feedback and iterated. Rinse, repeat.

The design system was begun at the same time, so by the time the detailed wireframes were complete, we could move quickly through the mockup phase. Meanwhile, we continued to user test as we began frontend development, while our sister company (and frequent collaborators) C4 worked on the backend and QuickBooks integration.

Results

AAA now has a detailed profile of each animal with current status and all relevant data, capturing the complete timeline from birth to death.

An active breeding tracker along with a breeding log gives AAA the ability to track statuses, locations, and lineages along with all related costs.

All of the financial data in the app now pushes to Quickbooks, reducing redundant data entry. A searchable and filterable database with robust profit/expense data enables them to easily pull accurate financial reports on a given animal or for the whole farm.

Now, AAA Farms has a single source of truth where data can be flexibly entered once, whether on-the-go or back at the office. Countless hours and errors have been saved. Most importantly, AAA can see profit/loss reporting for every head of cattle in the farm so they know which were the best investment.

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