Jakarta, December 15, 2021 – Horticultural seed producer PT East West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO) remains committed to improving the productivity and quality of Indonesian farmers’ corps through the provision of high-quality vegetable seeds, as well as the modern cultivation techniques training and coaching for farmers. Moreover, during a pandemic that demands the acceleration of industrial digital transformation, EWINDO also realizes that digitalization plays a very important role in empowering their 7 million vegetable farmers whose been nurtured by them over the past 30 years. The realization finally leads to a collaboration between EWINDO and Microsoft to accelerate digital transformation across all lines within the company.
“Based on the Central Statistics Agency’s data in 2020, agriculture has become the second-largest contributing sector for Indonesian Gross Domestic Product, with up to 13% of shares. The data shows how crucial the role of the agriculture industry is for Indonesia, especially in establishing resilience and economic recovery during and post-pandemic. Today, with digital transformation across industries becoming a key direction for Indonesia’s growth, accelerating the digitization of agriculture becomes a noteworthy thing since it can accelerate the empowerment of Indonesia’s digital economy growth, which is also predicted to grow up eight times bigger by 2030,” said Glenn Pardede, Managing Director of PT East West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO).
PT East West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO) Managing Director Glenn Pardede when surveying the Urban Farming Center area at EWINDO’s main office in Purwakarta
Seeing the huge potential for improving the welfare of Indonesian farmers, EWINDO then began to accelerate the company’s digital transformation by partnering with Microsoft in early 2021. Leveraging cloud-based technology as a digital transformation center, EWINDO tries to develop data-driven agricultural systems, starting from the company’s research activities in producing high-quality seeds, data storage, and visualization, to the distribution of seeds to millions of farmers across various areas in Indonesia.
“We believe that data plays an increasingly important role today. For example, in conducting research, EWINDO collected a lot of data – ranging from tomatoes DNA sequence data that measures about 950 Mega base-pair to chili peppers DNA sequence data that measures about 3.5 Giga base-pair. From there, we have to carry out big data processing to identify genetic markers that can help to produce high-quality seeds,” Glenn added.
EWINDO workers are observing plants on farmers’ land for seed production
“Previously, the process can take up to 24 hours since data processing needed to be done on-premise. However, after transforming with Microsoft by leveraging cloud technology, particularly through Azure High-Performance Computing, the data processing duration can be reduced to around 5 hours only. The insights that we draw can also be carried out in more depth, including by utilizing previous research data. As a result, we are able to continue providing state-of-the-art local seeds that can produce high-quality vegetables, thereby helping to improve the harvest quality of farmers in Indonesia and contributing to their well-being,” Glenn continued.
Another example from the importance of leveraging data-driven agriculture is in the area of data storage and visualization. The combination of Azure Datawarehouse and Power Business Intelligent (BI) utilization also allows EWINDO to integrate all data on only one platform, identify problems, as well as make decisions more quickly and accurately. For instance, in terms of predicting the market’s demands.
EWINDO workers are joining training about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) with Microsoft Dynamics 365
In addition, cloud-based technology is also able to provide flexibility that encourages workers’ creativity. For example, as workers become more accustomed to using the cloud, EWINDO employees can even develop a traceability program that allows distributors to track the delivery status of vegetable seeds. The existence of this program allows EWINDO to update distribution data in real-time and maintain relationships with distributors because the entire process is carried out effectively and transparently. EWINDO is also able to perform optimal quality control in all of its operations.
Fiki Setiyono, Azure Business Group Lead at Microsoft Indonesia said, “It is an honor for us at Microsoft to be EWINDO’s solution partner, especially seeing how EWINDO is innovating using Microsoft cloud to maximize data-based agriculture, and empowering millions of Indonesian farmers. In line with Microsoft’s mission to accelerate innovation in the agriculture industry, we hope that EWINDO’s transformation can be an inspiration for companies and other agricultural ecosystems to carry out digital transformations. Collectively, we will build these innovations to advance the Indonesian agricultural sector and empower domestic farmers.”
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