CANADA – Provision Analytics, a company that creates practical and precise software for food processors and manufacturers, has debuted a new analytics software that will help farmers make data-driven decisions using information gathered for food safety regulation compliance.
The software takes information gathered from all the regulated documentation requirements from seed, spray, harvest, wash, cut and packing of a product and stores it on a singular digital platform. That can save revenue in a worst-case recall scenario but it also reduces the need to document on paper the same procedures.
“It helps them to correlate any kind of quality outcome, good or bad, for all the variables leading up to it. It’s basically driving operational insights out of analytics using food safety data,” said Kevin Davies, Chief Marketing Officer of the new software, Provision Analytics.
He used the example of a listeria outbreak caused by a piece of equipment as how the software can laser focus on affected products.
“With Provision’s software, you can trace back to view that equipment on a certain date range and see all the products that might have passed through it and gotten listeria contamination. It just connects all of the data so you have greater visibility from any one variable to any related outcome,” explained Davies.
He informed that as for immediate practical uses, companies will have an instantaneous cost savings just in data entry and often times that alone covers the cost of the product. The bonus of using digitized software comes from being able to use that data to locate problems proactively or identify positive outcomes and be able to replicate them, said Davies.
“Once companies have data, they are able to make decisions that reduce their operating costs, improve their quality control. We’ve had clients who have reduced their food loss dramatically,” he said.
Using food safety data alone, the software can track both water and energy consumption of production as well. Provision Analytics recently announced that Sunterra Greenhouse will be adopting the new software as part of its new 20-acre greenhouse producing mainly tomatoes but also has two acres of strawberries.
The software will allow compliance tracking for Canada Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification at the greenhouse. Davies said the company worked with the CanadaGAP program during development and as such incorporates all of its manuals and forms in the software.
As more farms move to digital record keeping due to ease of use of technology, the Marketing Officer informed that the software can be adapted to just about any type of agricultural production.
“It’s a flexible system that can work across the food supply chain and the benefit of that is it’s a common tool that can be used by both the processor and the farms that supply them,” he said.
Provision scaling in tech sector
In 2020, Provision Analytics was named one of the top 15 up-and-coming tech companies in the region during Startup Calgary’s 11th Annual Launch Party. Startup Calgary is a grassroot movement in Calgary, Canada that creates opportunities for entrepreneurs and startups to connect.
It also acquired Crop Boss farm management software from Platinum Agriculture Solutions in the same year extending its food tech software reach to farm level.
Provision claims to have grown its revenue from client contracts by 20 times in 2020. It also claims to be the software provider for 51 percent of fresh and frozen food in Canada. The company recently graduated from the Creative Destruction Lab’s Recovery program and created a pandemic-specific software that tracks food workers for COVID-19 symptoms and potential exposure.
