(Source: Agweek)
By Mikkel Pates, Agweek Magazine
Aug. 29--FARGO, N.D. -- A Fargo, N.D., company is making its mark with a technology called "machine-to-machine," or "M2M."
This is a revolution that is changing the way co-ops do business with farmers and suppliers, keeping track of equipment and machines in real time.
Pedigree Technologies uses military-grade equipment at affordable prices to help agricultural cooperatives and others that serve farmers operate more efficiently, and at less cost, deepening relationships between service center and customers.
The "Pedigree Technologies OneView" system provides what sometimes is called "real-time operational awareness," meaning co-op managers can keep track of the whereabouts of fleets of trucks and fertilizer application equipment, but also do things like automatically generating necessary government reports or on-the-go calculations of vehicle taxes and driver logs in each state a vehicle travels.
Using this kind of technology, a co-op fertilizer applicator can warn the home system when it is running low on fuel or materials. It can be for just-in-time refilling of fuel and materials refilling and -- yes -- even order its own servicing and link with the accounting system to pay for it.
Alex Warner, 37, the company's president and chief executive officer, grew up on a Hillsboro, N.D., farm He graduated from high school in Halstad, Minn., acquired a degree in agronomy/plant sciences and minor in speech/communications from North Dakota State University in Fargo. He served an internship with DuPont Ag Chemicals Division in Minnesota before returning to the farm for a couple of years. Eventually, he went on to St. Cloud, Minn., and earned a degree in information systems (business/computer science) while his future wife, Leah Sonstelie of Winger, Minn., was in law school.
He launched Pedigree in 2003, first as a military contractor, in its "sense and respond" logistics.
In the past few years, it has shifted into the dynamic world of the private sector -- first in oil and gas and then into agricultural cooperatives. They figure their systems already serve about half of the agricultural cooperatives in North Dakota and 30 to 40 percent of the major co-ops in South Dakota. Some co-ops are using them to track more than 100 vehicles, while others use them on as few as ten trucks.
Warner says his company has 200 percent composite annual growth rates, but profitability statistics are private. Pedigree was named one of the top 100 "M2M companies in the world" by a trade publication that since has been renamed "Connected World." The company is in the top 33 in the systems software category.
Among the 50 or so employees is Joe Nicholas, another NDSU graduate, who is both doing direct sales and is director of business development. Nicholas says the company is branching out. He estimates market share of about 10 to 20 percent of the co-ops in Minnesota and is moving into Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and beyond to Texas, Tennessee and elsewhere.
Agriculture -- a natural
Warner farmed full- or part-time several years until his father retired in 2001 and rented out the land and joint-ventured the beet shares.
"I still feel like I miss the farm, and I still like to go back to my friends on the farm," he says.
In 2003, the company gained attention with an early pilot project sugar beet pile monitoring sensor system for American Crystal Sugar Co.