Mark Fraser, right, with site manager Anthony Hatt, who says the new system saves him an hour a day. Photo: Cooke

Cooke saves £1.3m a year by ditching form filling on farms

Salmon farmer Cooke Aquaculture has saved CAD2.16 million (£1.3m) a year in its north American operations by replacing form filling with a customised program for iPhones and iPads.

Published Last updated

The Canadian company – which also farms salmon in Scotland and Chile - is using the ProntoForms solution in the field to streamline multiple operations and maintenance processes: daily inspections of boats, barges, fish pens, and other sea farming equipment.   

Data submitted from the boats is transmitted to the office in real time and securely integrated into another program, Microsoft SharePoint, to ensure rapid and easy access of up-to-date information, including custom document formats, for management, auditors, and regulatory bodies, Ottawa-based ProntoForms said in a press release.

Field data is also integrated into the company’s Aquaculture Operations record system to track site performance, feed consumption, and inventory across multiple sites and regions.

More efficient

The solution helps Cooke workers become more efficient, saving about 4,200 hours per month and leading to big cost savings.

“We’re almost 100% paperless now in our department because of ProntoForms and their iOS solution for iPhone and iPad,” said Mark Fraser, remote feed supervisor at Cooke Aquaculture.

“One hour of savings per day for 200 users equals 4,200 hours per month, or about CAD180K/month in savings. Time to train staff to use ProntoForms on iPhone and iPad has been less than an hour given how intuitive the software and hardware are to use.”

He said one of the time-saving benefits was that a farm manager doesn’t have to type anything but selects an option from a pre-populated list.

Watch a video demonstrating the system here.