ADAMA

ADAMA is a leading, worldwide crop protection company that provides solutions to combat weeds, insects and disease. Following strong ongoing local growth, ADAMA wanted to fast-track its technology roadmap by implementing a range of new applications and services. The business therefore called upon Brennan, as their ongoing IT partner, to conduct a full strategic IT review, and ensure their planned roadmap was following best practice. The guidance provided by Brennan, and the subsequent success of the initiatives, took the partnership between ADAMA and Brennan to a new level.

The summary

Industry:

Agriculture

Country:

Australia

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Business Challenge

Unlock innovation and growth by evolving ADAMA’s core IT infrastructure, and provide ongoing strategic direction to help the business stay ahead.

Solution:

A series of initiatives to modernise and digitalise the business’ core infrastructure, including automating key processes, enhancing network availability and resilience, streamlining device management, and significantly enhancing security.

Results

A more robust, secure and agile IT infrastructure that delivers vital efficiencies and unlocks new opportunities, and a more significant new role for Brennan as ADAMA’s ongoing strategic technology partner.

“ADAMA and Brennan are now one team, achieving strategic IT goals together.”

Stuart Deer, Chief Financial Officer, ADAMA

The Situation

ADAMA’s presence in Australia has grown considerably in recent years, and the business’ previous IT roadmap was becoming outdated. It didn’t suit ADAMA’s aspirations, and there was a risk that new applications wouldn’t be supported by best practice infrastructure. Though Brennan had been providing quality IT maintenance and management services to ADAMA since 2006, the business was now seeking more strategic guidance, including IT support with a range of digital transformation initiatives.

The Challenge

Until recently, ADAMA was in a “holding pattern” with regards to its technology.

“We were focused too much on day-to-day troubleshooting than application development, automation and strategy. Everything was in a housekeeping phase rather than a development phase,” says Stuart Deer, ADAMAs Chief Financial Officer.

The business was running around 12 separate applications – most of which were owned and managed by non-technical team members, from various areas of the business. There was no overarching IT strategic alignment, and only minimal emphasis on the role of technology in growing the business. This was holding ADAMA back in terms of unlocking operational efficiencies, and optimising the customer and employee experience.

“ADAMA has been in a steady growth phase so our goal has to be in automating and systemising as much as possible,” says Stuart.

The Solution

Brennan has been working closely with the team at ADAMA to ramp up its IT innovation over the next three-year period.

“We pulled apart the old ways of working, identified areas in which we could save by replacing redundant solutions, and really thought about where we wanted to take the business in the future,” says Stuart.

Key innovations included:

Using core applications capabilities to build a structured architecture and way of working for future development.
Supporting more flexible, secure and efficient ways of working by implementing Microsoft 365 including Power BI.
Enhancing network availability and resilience by adding a failover data link and upgrading to SD-WAN.
Streamlining device management by implementing Microsoft InTune as well as other mobile device management and automated back-up and restore solutions.
Implementing a range of security-focused initiatives to ensure compliance with the ACSC’s Essential Eight framework.

The Result

As well as saving costs due to the consolidation and removal of redundant and dated infrastructure, these initiatives also improved network uptime, provided self-service capabilities for staff, and increased overall efficiency.

“We simply don’t get IT problems anymore. Our people are more savvy and independent, and more engaged with our technology journey as a whole,” says Stuart.

Due to the current and future planned success of these initiatives, Brennan was also firmly established as a trusted IT partner for ADAMA – to the point where ADAMA’s leadership team shared their overall business strategy and direction with the Brennan team. This ensured absolute transparency and has helped us develop the best possible IT partnership, in alignment with ADAMA’s goals.

“We transitioned from a situation where Brennan were simply providing best practice maintenance services, to one where they are now a very valuable and important strategic partner,” says Stuart.

“While we have been very transparent with regards to our business strategy, Brennan has also been very open and transparent in terms of what they can offer us. We now leverage the individual expertise of their team members in all kinds of areas,” he adds.

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