Service orientation - the key to success

NASAA – National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia – is one of the leading organic certification bodies in Australia, serving clients all over Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

NASAA is very proud of the high quality of its services, however, in addition to it current services, certification to organic standards, it now wishes to go in new directions and offer additional services.

Initial situation

Despite a well organised internal structure NASAA found it difficult to oversee the enormous amount of client and certification data. Measuring the actual work progress and tracking each of the files was complicated. Additionally, NASAA’s offices have a low storage capacity for paper files further burdening the employees with frustrations and difficulties.

Having to take into account many different criteria when distributing clients to the inspectors meant that the assignment and planning of inspections was complex and time consuming.
A new software solution was needed to replace the existing databases and capture existing processes electronically. The software was needed to standardise all processes and assist employees when answering clients’ requests on the phone.

Data entry was also a subject that needed addressing. To avoid misunderstandings it needed a uniform terminology, and sources for data entry errors needed to be reduced as far as possible.

Realisation

Using the software Ecert, NASAA members, clients, producer organisations and groups of very small farmers, as well as various other contacts are all integrated into one single database. To be able to better manage its members some fields in Ecert were adapted to specifically meet NASAA’s individual needs. Data on crops, livestock and products are now entered in a standardised and structured format by using crop/livestock/product trees. Inputs used in production and - if necessary their authorisation workflow - are documented in the same database.

When assigning inspectors to clients a mechanism checks whether the criteria required for the inspection match with the inspector‘s profile. Several criteria, including region, time preferences and training, are checked by Ecert before an inspector is assigned. This automatic check speeds up the planning of inspections.

The next step for NASAA is to start doing laptop inspections with the Ecert offline module. Already tracking and measuring the progress of each file is possible at any time and from any of NASAA‘s work stations. Client queries can, therefore, be answered within a few seconds without having to look in paper files for the information.

Brad Nott, Project Manager and Key User:

"We had an intensive implementation phase with the IT people of Intact to get our processes into Ecert, who provided excellent, world class customer support. With some hard work several databases were integrated into Ecert and at this very early stage, NASAA can see a return on its investment and is looking forward to being able to grow into Ecert and utilise its full potential."