10 steps to choose a forest management system

Your forest management system should bring operational and financial gains in various stages of the forest process

For forest process managers, answering questions like these is a daily task:

• How can I combine productivity and profitability with sustainability in forest management?

• How can I analyze the technological, financial, social and environmental aspects in decision making, in an agile, structured and safe way?

• How can I plan and control operations and resources, considering all the variables that impact the forest process?

• How can I deploy strategic planning goals in operational actions within each forest process?

• How can I achieve cost goals?

• How can I simulate productivity and cost of operations before execution?

• How can I analyze the impacts within the entire forest chain?

• How can I analyze the accomplished activities and explain deviations?

A forest management system can be the ideal solution for these issues. Keep reading to learn what considerations to bear in mind when choosing a good forest management system for your company.

1. Supplier

When purchasing a product or service, the consumer is always aware of the reputation that brand or supplier has gained in the market. It should be no different when choosing a forest management system.

It’s important to check how long the company has been in the market, review its successful case studies, learn its experience in the segment, and look for any market recognition (awards, certifications, and so on). It is also very important to seek testimonials from customers who use the solution, either through their website or via direct contact, in order to hear their opinion.

2. ROI (Return On Investment)

The system needs to bring operational and financial gains in various stages of the forest process. It is important to evaluate if the system solves problems that directly affect your company’s results.

For example: an error in measuring the area of the plots can generate a deficit or an annual surplus of wood. In addition to an area error, the registry, without proper consistencies and updating and auditing procedures, may have errors of spacing, genetic material, soil type, age, management scheme, topography, distance.

Any short-term change in the harvesting sequence should be evaluated in the long term for the verification of impacts and the search for new alternatives. The lack of integration of the harvesting process with roads, silviculture and inventory means that a change in the unreported harvesting sequence enables unnecessary operations such as: maintenance of roads in areas that will no longer be harvested, pre-harvest mowing operations or ant-fighting, and forest measurement for Pre-Harvesting Inventory.

In addition to solving these problems, it is important to evaluate whether the forest management system enables you to standardize processes to:

• Guarantee the objectives’ alignment and task execution within the corporate established standards;
• Control the operations execution with quality, costs reduction, either by avoiding repeating operations or by avoiding the loss of productivity;
• Perform an efficient management of service providers, thus allowing for operational gains, reduced costs and elimination of liabilities;
• Control forest management by always seeking to increase productivity and reduce costs by choosing the most appropriate management, operation, timing, procedure, equipment, resources, and genetic materials;
• Conduct land use management to ensure the sustainability and profitability of forestry activity;
• Make logistical management that represents a very significant cost within the production chain;
• Implement automation of processes from the use of systems, mobile devices and automated processes to increase the level of detail, reliability and availability of the information for decision making.

These are some bonus points in forest processes, which can be obtained through an integrated forest management system, also supported in some cases by changes in the way of operating, and the restructuring of processes and procedures.

Some gains are direct, such as fixed cost reduction to plan and control operations, increased productivity, and rework reduction, which reduce variable costs. Others are indirect, such as avoiding legal, labor, environmental, and tax problems. There are also the intangible gains, such as assisting the compliance with certification requirements, improving the relationship with stakeholders, and maintaining your corporate image.

3. Specific functionalities

It is important that your chosen system has process integration and can perform the planning and control of forestry activities as an efficient, competitive, profitable and self-sustaining business. It should also be able to handle different business models, taking into account forests, labor, equipment and own and third-party plants, aside from various handling forms and production technologies.

It is critical that the system plans and controls all stages of forest formation and its maintenance, monitoring the physical production variables, as well as the financial amounts involved, working with cost scenarios, calculating and assessing the operating yield, and setting benchmarks and indicators for performance and productivity.

Before choosing a solution, check if you can plan, prioritize, control, and fund all operations and if you can achieve different levels of performance consolidation and productivity information for strategic, tactical, and operational analysis.

4. Integration with ERP systems

Verify that the forest management system you’re considering works independently or integrates with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and keep your back office up to date with your forest operations.

In order to streamline processes and guarantee the quality of information, it is important that the system can be integrated with an ERP, performing automatic movements of stock materials and inputs; evaluation and accounting of operations; automatic feeding of basic master data tables: personnel, cost centers, accounting information, suppliers, customers, among others; and information consolidation for income statements.

5. Automation

In order to maximize the team programming productivity and operations control, it is necessary to automate processes and simplify notes. Features such as those listed below reduce the need for labor to operate the systems:

• Integrations with on-board computer machines
• Integrations with meteorological stations
• Integrations with machine sensors
• Simplified programming (programming by standard cost, phase, region, property or stand)
• Forest stratification and creation of planning and control units
• Map and graph views.

6. Consistencies

Verify that the system has consistencies that ensure that forest area procedures are complied with and data is released correctly.

If the procedures are still on paper, it is necessary to create and maintain them, as well as to communicate and train the teams, and audit them to verify compliance. If these procedures are performed by the system, in addition to the agility and ease, there is a guarantee of compliance with the foreseen processes.

Some examples of consistencies that can be verified:

• Do not allow the creation of a dual production order;
• To limit by area, volume or characteristic of land use or activity performed;
• For a silviculture activity: check whether it exists at the standard cost, whether it can be implemented for that type of soil, whether the yield is within the predicted, whether it can be carried out at that time, whether input dosages are correct, whether it is the best technical and financial option, among others.

7. GIS Tool

For the forest area, GIS is not only a thematic mapping tool, but also a tool for analysis, consistency and decision support.

Functions you should look for in a Forest Management System:

• Flexible web access
• Use of images
• Access for consultation of digital models: MDT and MDE
• Topology rules
• Allow navigation in areas through GPS
• Spatial integrity functions: consist of whether the plot belongs to the correct municipality, its dimensions, avoiding overlapping and gaps, among others
• Allow you to connect your forest operational data and information with your maps.

8. Mobility

Mobility is critical considering that the forestry activity is carried out in rural and dispersed areas. When considering a forest management system, check if there is a possibility of data collection in the field and if the operations team can view this online, for results monitoring and assertiveness in decision making.

It is imperative that the application enables you to eliminate note errors, anticipate validation errors, improve office-to-field communication, and access information any time at your fingertips, allowing for quick and efficient decision making. This information, once synchronized with the smartphone, also needs to be consulted even without an internet connection.

9. User-friendly interface

It is important that the system has a user-friendly and feature-rich interface to enable users to easily use it.

It’s essential that it allows you to:

• Perform flexible and configurable queries
• Consult and operate via maps
• Export data in various formats
• Sort by any attribute
• Query the data dictionary
• Access context-sensitive help
• Navigate directly between the various modules.

10. After sales

Just as important as choosing a good forest management system is whether the company that developed it offers adequate after-sales support, correcting or improving any system failures.

Verify the procedures of the after-sales service to learn if there are clear rules and if the company has a support call control system. Check the service level flexibility of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) to define and measure the level of service provided by the support team.

You should also check the system update frequency and, lastly, don’t forget to check if the company conducts customer service satisfaction surveys.

by Guilherme Brunoro

Ready to maximize the performance of your agricultural asset?

INFLOR’s forest management systems will help you get the best performance from your agribusiness investment, backed by years of industry experience serving clients across 4 continents and partnerships with the world’s leading technology providers.

Request a demo today to learn more.