Despite the new coronavirus pandemic, the sector was the only one in the country that showed growth, in the balance of the first quarter, increasing 3,3% compared to the same period in 2019, according to the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) . The segment grew 10% in the first half of the year totaling US$ 61 billion. This result is the result of the effort, dedication and mainly investment of producers and agribusinesses who dedicate themselves every day to making the entire production chain more efficient and profitable.
One of these companies is GAtec - agtech specialized in the development of tools for agro-industrial management, dedicated to bringing solutions to all segments of the sector. The brand, which is celebrating 19 years of operation in the market, has been accumulating solid growth, especially in recent years, where it has consolidated its expansion plan in the sector.
In 2019, for example, the agtech grew five times the growth of 2018 and, for this year, it projects more than tripling this result, even in the face of a period of great challenges in the country. “This growth is the result of work started way back with the objective of bringing solutions more complete and technological solutions for agribusiness. 2020 will certainly be and is already being the best year in the company's 19 years”, highlights GAtec's commercial director, Leandro Sarto.
GAtec emerged in 2001 to occupy a market niche that large ERPs, (English acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning) or Integrated Business Management System, do not operate with the depth that the market requires. From the beginning, the agtech It was structured to be present throughout the agribusiness chain and has remained steadfast in this purpose to this day. “As much as some ERPs take actions and extend their software to some type of agroindustry control, GAtec really goes deeper in this sense and differentiates itself”, says the director.
The company that originated in the sugar-energy sector, in which it still stands out today, is present in more than 50% of the plants in Brazil and abroad, since 2004 it has expanded its activities and operations to the multiculture market, focusing on the grain and cotton complex . The strategy was not to depend solely on one segment of the market.
After entering multicultures, the company continued to expand its solutions in the following years. In 2009, it expanded its operations to include livestock farming. The tool serves the livestock farmer from herd management (batch and/or individualized) to pasture control or confinement, also helping to control management, feed distribution, reproduction (breeding season, artificial insemination, IATF), health reports cattle map, slaughter report, movements and costs. “GAtec has become a company with solutions for the entire agribusiness and with its new operations also in livestock farming, we have once and for all consolidated our leadership in the specialist ERP market, a position that we reaffirm every year”, says Sarto.
Starting in 2015, the company made a major turning point in terms of its digital transformation. Since that time, it has intensified its investments in the development of its new SimpleFarm platform, which today has implemented its first projects, inside and outside Brazil, using this new technology. More than an update of technological language, SimpleFarm is the result of process re-engineering for operation in an environment SaaS (Software as a service), making it 100% web management software that can be used locally (on premise) or in the cloud. “We are sure that this new platform differentiates us even further from our competitors”, highlights the director.
It was in the same year that GAtec expanded its service to trading companies, with the solution called “Commerce”, further increasing its operations in agribusiness. This is a complete and innovative system for managing the purchase and sale of commodities agricultural products for the domestic market and exports, and helps the producer to control all processes involved in marketing, giving access to simple, intuitive, fast and assertive indicators.
The solution is available for different segments within agribusiness, it began to be developed in 2007 for farms and since then it has been perfected to become a complete solution. Now, Commerce is being evolved into the new SimpleFarm platform, on which all GAtec systems are beginning to converge. In addition to full integration with other customers' administrative systems, SimpleFarm's technological potential will make Commerce a commercialization platform for commodities, which will increase your potential.
It also includes this new digital era of the company, during this period, the first projects with the Mapfy platform GeoSystem, another important tool in the company’s growth tripod. The solution is a rural map management web application and is a GAtec technology. Simple, intuitive and objective, the system allows a new experience in visualization and georeferenced control of crops. With the tool, the producer can analyze and visualize quickly and integrated into maps through dynamic queries, to make more accurate decisions, as well as generate area analysis activities. “What started as a georeferenced query system for information generated within the GAtec solution, has today become a large platform geosystem for agribusiness, where the producer uses Mapfy as a hub of georeferenced information from the field” adds Sarto.
In recent years, GAtec has not strayed from its roots and maintains constant investment in R&D (Research and Development). “Our concern with evolving within the agro market is constant, many new features are yet to come. Agribusiness is a “commoditized” market and, therefore, we need to support producers, whether large, medium or small, to optimize their processes, reduce their costs and increase their efficiencies. They need intelligent and practical tools that really support them in your daily life”, says the director.
Today, GAtec and its solutions are present in more than 250 clients, which together total more than 7 million controlled hectares and more than 10 thousand users. With its consolidated leadership in the market, agtech remains firm in its growth project. Recently the company moved to a new headquarters. The larger and more modern space was precisely designed for the expansion of the company, in terms of products and customers.
Furthermore, in human resources alone from December 2019 to August this year, the company expanded its team of employees by 70%. This significant number is aimed at new deliveries for 2020/21. “In addition to the migration of current systems from the GAtec base to the SimpleFarm platform, we see that in the next three years, at least 30% of current competitive customers should migrate to our platform as well”, highlights the company's CEO, Paulo Lordello Novaes.
In the Brazilian market, GAtec has sought and intensified the strengthening of strategic partnerships that have given the company a lot of reach. In the international market, the company, which is present in 12 countries, now expands the spotlight to Latin America and also to the United States, especially now with the closing of a new project in Florida, with Florida Crystals Corporation.
The group is one of the largest American sugarcane producers, where it will initially carry out the agricultural planning and management of its sugarcane fields. “We are very proud to be the company selected as a software provider for this demanding market after rigorous selection criteria. This will give GAtec a lot of visibility. These are quality tests for SimpleFarm and Mapfy, which are products that are part of the project”, concludes Novaes.
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