With nearly 24.76% of the global milk supply produced locally, India is clearly the world’s largest milk producer. The “White Revolution” is facilitated largely by cooperative dairies that have been a central pillar of India’s milk production dominance since before independence. They created robust frameworks for organized milk production and supply that stood the test of time. These networks today involve millions of cattle farmers across all districts in the country coming together to funnel their produce into cooperative dairies that are now aspiring to become global brands like Amul.
However, for a long time cooperative dairies have relied on legacy approaches to manage their operations. Apart from being inefficient and cost-intensive, this has often created problems in efficiently ensuring that all stakeholders can seamlessly participate in the production and supply ecosystem to the greatest effect.
The path to digitization in cooperative dairies
Over the past couple of decades, there has been only limited progress for cooperative dairies when it comes to digitization efforts. In most cases, the use of a few computers at collection centres was the only involvement of anything technical in the whole process. Most records and communications were handled manually. However, as the scale of operations of cooperative dairies grew exponentially, the troubles of compliance, inefficiency, corruption, and poor stakeholder value began mounting as well.
From account keeping and real-time logistics updates to tracking cattle health and veterinarian visits, there is a range of activities that modern cooperative dairies must handle to ensure continuous quality and value generation in the full ecosystem. This is possible only if cooperative dairies emerge from their traditional management style and accommodate new digital innovations into their daily operations.
On this note let us explore the top digital solutions that cooperative dairies must adopt now for a better and prosperous future:
Integrated Dairy ERP
Cooperative dairies deal with a diverse range of stakeholders in its operational value chain. There are farmers, vendors who supply cattle feed and other necessary resources for farmers, sales partners, logistics partners, direct employees, field agents, and much more. For a typical working day, a cooperative dairy would require the functioning of multiple operational departments like Finance & Accounts, Sales & Distribution, Procurement & Purchases, Store and Inventory, HR, and much more.
Bringing all these functions under an efficient digital system that enables transparent management is a critical need for sustainable growth without compromising profitability. This is where an ERP system becomes a vital digital asset for cooperative dairies. A powerful ERP solution doesn’t just provide management systems for different departments but it also ensures that cross-departmental activities are facilitated when needed. For example, finance may need insights and data from the sales team to settle bills and invoices. An ERP system will bring cross-functional collaboration into the picture allowing different departments to embrace a connected digital transformation without friction.
Mobility solutions
Digital services can help different stakeholders in the cooperative dairy to collaborate effectively and efficiently. However, it is not always possible for all parties to leverage a computer to avail of digital services. This is where the power of mobile initiatives comes into the picture. Providing app-based workflows and support for different stakeholders can help facilitate better collaboration and easier digital data capture and leverage experiences.
For example, farmers could have an app interface through which they can see their earnings, the milk they supplied, their transaction history, daily rates, and other important data and notifications from their partnering dairies. Workers at the dairy store could have apps that help them collate and centralize daily inventory data which helps in planning and other operational initiatives. These apps accessible on smartphones can help eliminate challenges such as lack of access to computers and also make digital assets more convenient to use with simple mobile interfaces.
Real-time Production & Quality Monitoring
Digital solutions that integrate with different hardware in dairy units will help in the accurate capture of production data. This will facilitate more transparency and visibility into the business aspects of the cooperative dairy. Local governing bodies and organizations that fund or have operational interests in such establishments will get accurate information on production volume, growth estimates, and other key data necessary for making accurate decisions.
In addition to capturing and transmitting data directly from plant hardware, such solutions help automate a significant part of the operational workflows of dairy units. For example, data from the milk meters in the plant can be automatically updated across store and finance systems of the ERP and further automatically billed for delivery. Payment reconciliations done against billing can be updated against the supplies to ensure that farmer payments are automatically settled.
Towards a better future
Cooperative dairies form a key pillar of the vision enabling India to become not just a global leader in milk production but also ensure economic growth and employment, especially in rural areas. Empowering stakeholders in the cooperative dairy sector with digital services is key to managing the aspiring scale of operations that they target to grow into. The transparency, ease of collaboration, robust data management, and convenience digital solutions offer for all parties involved are highly commendable.
However, cooperative dairies must ensure they select digital solutions built with the expertise necessary to cover all unique areas of operations within such a siloed ecosystem. This is where expert solution providers like CSI can be the true technology partner for cooperative dairies. Get in touch with us to know more about our unique offerings tailored exclusively for cooperative dairies.