For farmers, getting the right price for their crops can be the difference between a profitable harvest and a rotten one. In fact, just a one-cent mistake could result in up to USD 10,000 in losses.
Farmers Cooperative Society aims to make the buying and selling process easier for farmers with products and services such as consulting and crop storage facilities. Even though the co-op is a 24x7 operation, its systems would shut down every night for two to three hours to complete backups. Not only did the co-op need to manually track prices during this downtime, but employees couldn’t edit orders or access time systems—often causing unnecessary support calls.
Learn how IBM Consulting™ can help grow your business
Farmers Cooperative Society has been working with IBM for nearly 20 years, using IBM® Power® servers as an essential part of its business. This relationship—as well as the scale, performance and support of these servers—is why the co-op turned to IBM to solve its downtime challenges.
Together, IBM and the co-op found the solution in the IBM PowerHA® Full System FlashCopy® (FSFC) offering. It enabled the co-op to stay online during the entire backup process no matter what time a backup is performed. This solution also increased the frequency of backups from once per night to three times a day—keeping farmers connected to the market and helping to prevent data loss.
The new FSFC solution IBM implemented together with Farmers Cooperative Society is yielding a lot more than uptime. The frequent backups allow the co-op to recover more of its data in case it’s ever lost or deleted. And by clearing out those downtime support calls, total support call volume fell by 50%—giving the team more time for other priorities.
In fact, the co-op can now perform tests during the day without impacting the live systems. So Farmers Cooperative Society can continue to improve how it serves those who feed the world.
Headquartered in Sioux Center, Iowa, Farmers Cooperative Society (link resides outside of ibm.com) offers farmers a range of agricultural growing and marketing products and services, including crop-storage facilities and business consulting. This farmer-owned co-op also runs a feedlot that helps members buy and care for feeder cattle as well as a member-only store that sells hardware, lawn-care products, lumber, paint and more.
Legal
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2023. IBM Corporation, New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504
Produced in the United States of America. September 2023.
IBM, the IBM logo, FlashCopy, IBM Consulting, IBM Power, and PowerHA are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on ibm.com/legal/copyright-trademark.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.
All client examples cited or described are presented as illustrations of the manner in which some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual client configurations and conditions. Generally expected results cannot be provided as each client's results will depend entirely on the client's systems and services ordered. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.