Communication beyond the farm gate.
Information in the right hands driving safety and productivity.
The National Agricultural Workforce Strategy says innovation and automation boost productivity & profitability, while not innovating imposes a risk versus international competition. The NFF even suggests that automation will improve the quality of life of farmers.
Overcome the risk of remote work
Livestock or cropping, agriculture businesses need unbroken lines of communication despite operating over vast, often remote, distances. As one of the most dangerous professions, your team needs to be able to request safety assistance or rescue, or simple keep their base notified of work progress. Make sure your team can access the assistance they need.
Integrate farm management to communications
Modern agriculture now has a wealth of IoT data being recorded. Get this data into the right hands to record the information you need to run the farm, respond to issues, or manage safety. Data could come from weather gauges deep in the field, livestock monitoring applications or any other sensor information in the growing AgTech space.
Role-based messaging to get the right help
A large business, by headcount or distance, means people don’t know who's available when they need help. With role-based communication, a worker in the field can identify the right contact and request assistance or advice. This becomes especially important if you have temporary workers, such as in harvesting season, when they might not know the best escalation point to achieve a necessary outcome.
A message integration engine ready for IoT
Ikonix Messenger connects with API feeds or even simple switches, allowing you to bring in the growing pool of data on your farm, and conveying that to the people that can use it for decision-making. Ikonix Technology works with clients and their vendors to integrate unique solutions into the communications ecosystem.
Connecting your team by role
With Ikonix Connect, your large, dispersed or even seasonal workforce can find one another without knowing the individual they need. By searching contacts by role rather than specific person, your team can access the right person, such as a safety rep or medical specialist.
Get advice by securely sending media
The smartphone in a worker's pocket is all they need to get advice from your specialists. Perhaps it's a wound on your livestock, identifying a weed or insect, or anything else. Simply take a photo or video and share securely within Ikonix Connect, and a single or group can give your team the help they require for day-to-day or critical situations.
No cellular coverage is no problem
The inherent regional and remote nature of agribusiness means signals need to cover vast distances, but frequently in spotty mobile phone coverage - if any. As leaders in radio paging networks, the technology we've deployed across (and between) Australian hospitals can help manage the farm, and keep your teams and assets in communication range.
Frequently Asked Questions
Also referred to as ‘AgriTech’ or ‘smart farming’, this is the inclusion of advanced technology in agriculture. Much like ‘Industry 4.0’ in manufacturing, advances in technology allow for greater productivity through data analysis and insight.
In a practical sense this could mean precision farming through sensor data, the use of robots or drones, and data science to make informed decisions.
In many cases, those solutions need to communicate to the personnel on the ground, to drive human activity. This is where Ikonix Technology contributes, with our Message Integration Engine, Ikonix Messenger distributing the information from those solutions to your personnel in an operations station, or in the field with their smartphone or tablet.
The Internet of Things, often just called IoT, is the trend of enabling what would have been otherwise standalone devices or systems, to access the internet. At home this is smart fridges and lighting, but in agriculture this becomes connecting tractors and other farm machinery, infrastructure like dairy milking equipment, and crop monitoring with sensors.
The main advantage is in data collection, and system control. Modern farms can see more, conduct deeper analysis, and improve productivity, often with fewer people on-site.
Modern agribusiness workplaces have diverse safety technologies deployed. As Ikonix Technology can work with all kinds of solutions, this could mean delivering critical messaging solutions for movement and man-down or personal duress alarms, HVAC controllers for processing facilities, in-built accelerometer or gyroscopes for equipment, air quality sensors such as carbon dioxide or monoxide detection, or sensors to pick up vibrations, pressure, or electrical current.
For monitoring production, sensors will differ depending on your crop or livestock. These could be monitoring water or feed levels, soil quality and moisture, weather observations, and much more. Technology is being integrated in every aspect of all agribusiness sectors.
Ikonix Technology can help you turn single point-to-point communication into an organisation-wide safety alerting and critical messaging solution.
By bringing together a variety of different technologies, you can still achieve critical communications for safety and collaboration in agribusiness. Where there is mobile phone signal, Ikonix Connect helps your team stay in touch. If not, you might consider setting up a Wi-Fi network, either linked to your terrestrial Internet connection, or a satellite solution.
In many cases, as with serving emergency services across the NT, a paging network might be the best. Because paging has a longer signal wavelength, less power is required to cover distance, allowing a remote property to have constant coverage for critical messaging.
Agribusinesses often have to make major changes to their workforce, during times such as harvesting or picking. This means any communication solutions must be able to absorb and quickly onboard a flexible and changing workforce.
Ikonix Connect has been designed to be intuitive to use, with the most basic features exactly as they might be expected to appear in common consumer grade applications. We have found that users quickly pick up the platform. Your central management can happen in a browser that broadcasts to the field workers’ smartphones, ensuring true connectivity.
The platform also integrates with your directory, including being able to import user profiles. As you are likely already onboarding staff with an email address for HR, safety and payroll processes, these emails can become part of the approved list for user registration.
Importantly, because Ikonix Connect operates on any recent Android or Apple smartphone, you do not necessarily need to assign hardware to your teams. They can easily use their own device – BYOD.
The capability to send and receive rich media such as photos or videos allows remote personnel to gain insight and make better informed decisions.
Much like a doctor asking for a second opinion on a wound, a field worker can get a horticulturalist’s opinion on a plant’s growth, or a veterinarian’s advice on livestock wellbeing.
Using Ikonix Connect, your farm’s team can send one another such media, and get immediate assistance, without calling a specialist into what could be a distant location, greatly improving the productivity of your people.