Speeding up life on the farm

Contributor Steve Zuckerman, “At the Customer For the Customer” leader, GE Capital

Working for GE Capital, my job has sent me on many trips; however, I never expected to spend two days working on business operations to improve life on the farm. But that’s exactly what I did, recently, as part of GE’s At the Customer, For the Customer (ACFC) initiative to share best practices with customers to help them improve their business processes.

So you might be wondering what’s the connection between GE Capital and farms in the Midwest? Well, it’s simple. If you can help your customers do business better, they can grow faster, and you can help finance that growth.

It was that reason that brought me to Zeeland Farm Services, Inc., a family-owned and operated business with more than 55 years of service to the agricultural and transportation industries.

Zeeland Farm Services has an ingredient division that buys and sells agricultural co-products. Meaning when cotton or oranges are processed, things such as cottonseed and citrus pulp are left over. The fact is these co-products are actually nutritious, valuable ingredients for livestock feed. So what ZFS does is buy, ship and store these and other co-products to make sure it is available for delivery when their livestock customers need it.

However, their process was very manual and required lots of paperwork. So, my colleague, Tony LaBoa, and I conducted a two-day workshop to analyze their process and identify opportunities to save time and money.

At the end of the two days, ZFS had identified improvements in their invoicing process that will reduce the time it takes to get an invoice out by 50%. Also, 40-50 hours of weekly, manual reporting time was eliminated!

So now ZFS can move quicker and their customers’ cows and other livestock have lots to eat! It was a great engagement that delivered big results for a valued customer. As for me, I haven’t looked at an orange quite the same since then.